


fall three times as hard, if it's for nothing at all

by civilorange



Series: stumbling is not falling [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'll add more - Freeform, Near Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sequel, near suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civilorange/pseuds/civilorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-canon. After the mountain Clarke thought she'd be left alone with her ghosts, but the world doesn't stop turning because she's drowning in guilt. No, the grounders aren't the only survivors in the wasteland of the United States; and they definitely aren't the most dangerous. <i>this one's for the torn down, the experts at the fall</i> sequel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the pattern of life. of living

**Author's Note:**

> I’m back! After a long while of soul searching, I’ve returned for the installment of my series— _fall three times as hard, if it’s for nothing at all_. The title comes from one of my favorite songs, _Starving Your Friends_ , by _Envy on the Coast_. If you don’t know them, you should check them out, I love them. I have some things planned out, some of which you’ll see the set up for in this chapter. I know this is starting out kind of slow, but we can’t just jump right into the meat too quickly! Don’t worry, things will be picking up. 
> 
> If you haven’t read my first story, know this is a direct continuation, but because how I’m doing it, you don’t necessarily have to read it. Considering Clarke will be finding out about much of what I created in the last story first hand, for the first time. There were slight changes from Canon—very slight in many cases—but not enough that you won’t be able to keep up.
> 
>  **EDIT** : So, I edited this whole chapter to go from third person limited, to second person; everything was just coming across too choppily, and my tenses were getting massacred. So there will be divergences, from other perspectives, but Clarke will be second person.

** Trigedakru territory, Eastern United States, 98.10 AUS ** **.**

The hardest thing to imagine is a straight line.

Starting at the tips of your toes, stretching forward and away, toward the horizon you're never exactly sure you're seeing. It’s lost somewhere behind hills, and endless forests—behind mountains and distant shores. Is the horizon just the end of the sky? Where the blue kisses the earth—be it treetops or mountain ranges? You've always imagined it grander than that—more defined. The last glance of ocean before the earth curved just enough that it slipped away from sight. The sun sluggish and craving night; desperate for sleep beneath the jagged grin of mountain tops. The crisp clear light of the day bleeding red at dusk; splashing the color across the placid reflection of lakes, the plush towering clouds. A slaughter in the sky.

You are that setting sun, bleeding red, just before night.

The quiet folds in without warning; from all sides smothering like an oppressive weight that you're only just realizing should crush you. It’s always been there, bending your shoulders and threatening the integrity of your spine. But you have always thought it would get lighter—that when the tough choices have been made, the weight would go away and you’d simply drown in guilt instead. That the horror, and disgust, and pain, would fill your lungs and spill through your insides—letting you walk tall and true to your underwater grave.

Unflinching, but damned all the same.

But no, that isn’t the case. The weight doubles, and triples, until your knees buckle and your shoulders shake, until the ground beckons with such a sweet note that you can almost succumb. Can almost lay down in the dark somewhere forgotten and remain; part of this land that you’ve only known truly for what seems like blinks of the eye. Only seconds against the years spent orbiting the earth.

Leaving behind those that had limped and whimpered from the mountain was not ideal, it was not what you  _wanted_ , but it was what had to happen. You could not look at them and  _not_  think about the bodies piled underneath the mountain. Beneath the ground, but not buried; surely not forgotten. Not by you, not ever. They will linger like flashing light; painted against the dark of your lids when you close your eyes. Even if only for a moment.

They have no names for you to give them, none that you can remember and whisper when the forest falls asleep. They are nameless, even if they are not faceless. The twisting ruin of their faces are a horror show that will never sleep; they don’t care for time, or distance. They live in the woods now, lingering between the trunks of trees as they had never been allowed to do in life—the radiation couldn’t hurt them anymore, it couldn’t ruin them anymore than you already had.

You doesn’t know where you is going, there is no destination in your mind, no end point where you’ll find solace. No place where peace will find you. You walk with the mountain at your back, with the Ark lost somewhere in the distance. But it is like they are amplified the further away you gets, the more distance you covers. You can feel them pressing down on your shoulders, pushing your forward and away, but refusing to let your go. Refusing to uncurl their fingers from where they have lodged into your burning muscles and your tired bones.

You walk until you can’t anymore.

Feet kicking through underbrush, dragging through dust, and dirt, and mud. Your eyes are focused, set forward like you might find something worthwhile just beyond the next line of trees. The snapping branches and rustling leaves to either of your sides don’t demand your attention—there’s a thoughtlessness that consumes your, as if really settling and allowing everything to fold inside will kill you. Will stop your lungs from expanding, and your heart from beating—you doesn’t fear the dark, or the beasts that linger within it.

You fear the knowledge that you is the worst thing lingering in the black of night.

The ache starts slowly—in the soles of your feet, a dull throbbing that matches the rhythmic pace of your steps. A pinch in the arch as you rotate improperly on a rock, a stab as your ankle protests the sloppy slant, and a pull up the back of your leg as you correct yourself. Stopping for the first time in hours.

You realize only now how your chest expands greedily to fill your struggling lungs, a telltale wheeze at the back of your throat from the cool moist air of the morning. Everything hurts, and for the first time all night, it isn’t the ache in your chest, or the phantoms in your bones. It is something clinical, and physical, and real—and that gives a startling kind of clarity. The pain ebbs and flows, it throbs and fades, and it is part of you now—like the pain inside, but this one is real.

Standing in the dawn, just before the sun finds its way into the sky, everything is absurdly quiet. It is familiar in a way, because when you had looked down at the world from your box in the sky, there hadn’t been the whistle of wind through the trees, or the rustle of animals in the underbrush. It had been a globe of green and blue, spinning in the empty black of space—silent and still in ways that had seemed artificial. It was a distant, _impossible_ , kind of something that you’d dreamed about because that was the only place that sunsets and thunderstorms seemed possible. Spread like paint across the inside of your eyelids.

The artist in you cherishes the orange of the morning appearing behind the slanted brown of the mountains, from somewhere beyond the green of the treetops. Somehow even now this world is beautiful, despite the bodies piled ten deep in your name. Despite legions of people being so invested in savage wars and cold survival that they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Couldn’t pick apart their individual truths—just as you had chosen your people over those within the mountain, sentencing them to death, Lexa had chosen hers. They had injected themselves with ice, and stepped into the night, shouldering their dead.

Did Lexa feel lighter? Did she know her death count was forty short? Was the commander’s number so large, she wouldn’t even notice a few missing?

The day seemed impossibly short, the sun dancing through the sky, despite the gray clouds lingering out to the east—surely rolling in from the ocean.

Curling up beneath a rock jutting out from a cliff face, it had been a questionable sleep—every rustle, every snapped twig woke you. But even when you were startled awake, you remained half curled on your side, listening for another broken branch, another rustling bush. It was somehow cathartic to wait for the second shoe to fall. To leave your mercy in the hands of something as fickle and nonexistent, as fate. As destiny.

This time, when your eyes snap open, it isn’t a bush or a branch—it is the wet belly rumble of a growl. It skitters along your spine, your arms and legs moving already to pull yourself into a crouch. A form is crashing through the darkness, not caring for stealth, not wanting for cover. In the blink of an eye, a body tears the dark apart and lumbers into the barely illuminated clearing.

A wolf snaps teeth and snarls, whipping its head around to settle glowing amber eyes on you. It isn’t the natural kind of brightness that you had seen depicted in films and even in the glossed pages of books. There is a rabid film across the luminescent gold, something unseeing and foreign that prickles all the nerves along your spine. All those animal reactions that make you prey, and not predator. The urge to run, to turn tail and slip off into the dark.

For the first time in days, your heart thuds against the inside of your ribs, loud and fast. The chill of your skin is chased away by the flush crawling across your cheeks, across the brittle lines of your collarbones. For days, you have convinced yourself that you wouldn’t care if you died, if you walked off into the night and never returned—but it had always been an abstract sense, a distant thought that pinged around inside your brain, in the dark dangerous corners that you refused to linger in.

Now, death appears as a wolf that easily reaches your chest at its withers—massive graying head tipped forward as its nostrils flared. While its fur was light in color, a shadowed white that was shaggy and thick, the bristle around the wolf’s muzzle was raw and infected. Its lower jaw a twisted mess of ligaments and muscle, taunt and dripping viscous red. The creature’s mutation a weeping maw that seemed forever hungry and savage.

Your heartbeat pounds away in your ears, almost drowning out the gurgling rumble of the canine’s growl as it stalks closer. You could only think of how scared you’d been in the damp den of the  _pauna_ ; the cool cement against your back, the living warmth of Lexa at your side—shaking your head, you pull yourself out of that particular musing. No, you wouldn’t think of  _your_  now. Not as the animal finally stopped circling and coiled tightly, readying itself to lunge.

The cold plastic of your sidearm feels thick and unnatural in your hand, heavy and improper as you pull it out and brandish it before you. It isn’t as heavy as it could have been—half the bullets gone, one of many being a single memorable bullet lodged in Dante’s chest. It was almost automatic the way your finger squeezes—not pulling—and the muzzle flashes. A bright spot in the dark that culminates with the wolf being plucked out of the air by the force of the two bullets lodged in its shoulder.

Fresh bright red blossoms through thick white fur, staining it crimson as the wolf staggers to its feet. More steady than anything wounded had the right to be, you concede only a step—maybe two—before raising the gun again. You have no way of knowing exactly how many bullets are left. But you know, somehow, that it won’t be enough.

 _Click, click_.

The sound is like a gavel, declaring some unyielding end, and you can feel it in your chest, like fists against your sternum, pounding away any hope, any light. Feral gold eyes following your movement as you move to the side, keeping a grip on the weapon, even if it is empty and bordering on useless. Tension dragging its way up your spine until it sits rigidly across your shoulders. The barest tremble that has only a little to do with fear—no, that lives in your heart, and now your mind—your body is settling into fight. Fleeing having been thrown away as useless.

As muscles shift, you have only a moment’s warning before the animal springs forward, rolling and tucking your chin under your arm. Heat radiates off the belly of the monstrous canine, an unnatural amount of heat that you can still almost feel against the unprotected skin of your cheek. The way its weight nearly shakes the ground, its claws digging up earth as it wrenches itself around, jumping before its momentum stops.

As a claw digs into the meat of your arm, you can’t get a look at the damage before you’re forced to scramble away, hiding behind the wide base of a nearly uprooted tree. Blood seeps into the blue fabric of your jacket, the edges fraying as you gulp down lungfuls of air.

There’s silence, and then the briefest blink of golden eyes in the dark before the ground shudders under a lunging force.

Clenching your eyes shut, you wait.

Instead of the pain you expect, there’s a yell and the thunder of a heavy weight hitting the ground harshly. The abrupt scrape of claws as the animal rights itself, makes it so that you can’t stop yourself from looking—and you’re met with the profile of…

A boy.

No older than fifteen, no taller than your chin. His lips pull back into a sneer, his arms raised in a defensive posture. The blood splashed across his face doesn’t seem to be his. He’s saying something harshly in  _trigedasleng_ , the rumble in his voice still somehow closer to a child’s lilt. Heavy, and profound, but there’s too much youth in the narrow width of his shoulders, and the curve of his cheeks.

There’s nothing graceful or pointed in how he fights. Clicking his tongue to keep the massive animal’s attention on him, scuffing his bare feet through the dirt to stay grounded. There’s too many close calls, but somehow that makes it  _more_  enthralling. The way his small nicked blade lines against his forearm, how he tilts his body away from his foe, putting all his weight on his back foot allowing him the strength to get away from a wild swipes and snapping teeth.

His face is dirty, and you can’t make out his features as he dives about, carving small gashes and shallow wounds into the wolf until most of the beast’s shaggy white coat is red. Not horribly injured, but losing blood. Pressing your hand into the ground to get up, a rock digs into the meat of your palm, and as your fingers curl around it, knowing you can’t stay down. Can’t let this boy possibly die—not for you. Your heart hammers against your sternum, a strong rhythm you can feel in the clench of your jaw, in the pulse of your temple.

The pattern of life. Of living. Thrumming away inside.

Getting to your feet with the rock held tightly, you watch how the small figure dashes in and out, quiet as the falling night itself. It isn’t until the animal lurches around and catches the boy with his tail that you react. Stepping forward into the throw—you can remember how Bellamy had trained some of the delinquents. How his shoulders squared and his finger guided the throw. Granted, those had been knives, but the principle had to be similar.

Right?

The fist sized stone bounces off the shoulder of the wolf, the barest of yelps more of surprise than pain as it spins around. Frothing mouth gaping open, opaque golden eyes feverish and wild. There is something calming about looking into the eyes of the wolf—it doesn’t care who you are, or what you have done. It is a predator, you are prey and that is all you are to it—food. It doesn’t care if you live or die, until the moment it grows hungry.

All that considerable weight shifts back, readying to throw itself forward, to land its front paws into your shoulders and pin you to the ground. To rend your throat open and dig into your gullet. The possibilities play out in the half-seconds you have before the animal lunges. The half second before a thin narrow arm wraps around the broad throat of the beast. Before a small poorly made dagger is plunging three times into the side of the beast’s throat. Blood gurgling and hissing out and the animal buckles and falls.

There’s a numb kind of something; like stepping out of time and looking at the future. Of knowing exactly what should have happened, and yet it hadn’t. While life has become a line of dead bodies, you seem destined to not be one of them.

With the dead wolf at his feet, the boy looks at you, his eyes too large to seem menacing, despite the blood splashed across his face. His hair flops muddily into his vision, and he swipes gruffly at them until they’re slicked back and out of his sight. His hands are open, though half curling, like he wishes to still have the blade that he’s left in the wolf’s throat. A cold bloody comfort. There’s something about this boy that clenches like a fist around your heart. Something about the set of his lips, and the brightness of his eyes.

“Thank you.” your voice rasps and cracks, and you realize you haven’t spoken since biding goodbye to Bellamy at the gate; since you had chosen to walk away, instead of staying with those who would only serve to remind you of choices made. Licking your lips, and clearing your throat, you repeat yourself, a little louder, a little clearer. “Thank you.”

The boy doesn’t speak.

Bending down to rip the blade from the carcass, he seems to have more concern with wiping the blood off the choppy metal of his dagger. Once he’s satisfied with the job he’s done, he turns to look at you, _really_ sizing you up for the first time since he appeared from the woods. Blinking slowly and working his jaw; you realizes he’s chewing on his bottom lip nervously. This small, fierce boy has killed a festering wolf easily thrice his weight, but now he watches you with unsure eyes. His leg bouncing as he shifts his weight back— _away_.

Raising your hands as a sign of peace, you move to take a step forward, stopping when the boy takes a step back.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” it’s ridiculous really, that you are any danger, but the way he shifts around to the side, watching with caution as he walks toward the tree line. It is eerie how similar his gait is to the wolf—how his bare feet cross over each other easily, how his spine rolls into the step.

Still he doesn’t speak.

You know that English isn’t the native tongue to most  _trikru_ , and have taken for granted the ability to communicate with the warrior people you have encountered.

The forest rustles behind him, and you don’t need any more prompting to walk the other way; to clasp fingers over the bleeding gouge in your arm, and try to find someplace to rest for the night. Looking over your shoulder, only to see him glancing back as well, you offer a final word of parting, “ _Machof_.”

And even in the tumbling twilight, you swear he smiles.

Walking toward the sound of the river, the ache that has set into your bones throbs, all the blood dried onto your skin itches, and you want nothing more than to clean your face. To close your eyes, and have a moment to relish the fact that you are  _alive_ —even if only hours ago you hadn’t even been sure you cared. Hadn’t realized you were more than the ghosts you carried; it took a brush far too close to death for comfort, but it was needed.

Gingerly pulling off your ruined jacket exposing your wounded bicep, you press into the tender skin around the tear. It was deep enough that you worry about needing stitches, but there is really nothing to do about it. Ripping the bottom of your shirt away, you dip it into the cold clear water, it is refreshing, but there was still the worry of infection.

Wrapping another liberated piece of your shirt around your bicep, you take a moment to stand up, to get your blood moving. To get a full chest of air. You’d need to hunt down something to stave off infection, something to sooth the burn. Looking into the dark it seems quiet, only the chirp of insects and the low hum of activity.

After a while shuffling through underbrush, there was nothing to be found, nothing that could hope to do what you wish. You turn around, intending to look again in the light of day.

Walking back toward your camp—if it can be called that—there’s a glow that trickles through the leaves. Firelight. Ducking back into the cover of a tree, you search for the people who must’ve lit it. A hunting party, or scouts. Cursing your disregard for how quiet it has been, how few grounders you’d encountered in the last few days.

After a while of no motion, you creep closer, blue eyes searching for the culprit, but you’re only left with a small fire in the center of your camp. Barely enough to give off warmth, but your soaked jacket is resting beside the fire on a rock, drying off. Searching for any hint for what happened, you can only uncover a cloth soaked in a medicinal paste you recognizes by scent alone. Nyko had used it on a warrior to fight infection.

Leaving it where it is, you sit just outside the firelight, your eyes adjusting to the dark, your skin pebbling from the cold. Waiting for whoever has made the fire to come back—your pistol sitting uselessly in your lap. Fingers curled tightly around the grip, despite the fact that there are no bullets left.

Well past midnight, when the fire began to dull, you hear movement, your own limbs growing sluggish with how you curl motionlessly the last few hours. Waiting for the crackle of fire devouring a new log, you pop out—raising the pistol to your eye, ready to bluff your way to some answers.

Instead you find the boy who’d saved you two days ago; still dirty, with hints of blood at his ears and in the beds of his nails, but he looks like he’s scrubbed at his face. Wide gray-brown eyes regard you with too many emotions to chase—though they settle on cautious fear. His appearance makes you lower the gun, settling it somewhere around your hip—not because he’d know you had no bullets, but because there is no way you’d point a gun at him.

He’s a child—one that saved you, yes—but the brightness of his eyes is disarming.

“You’ve been following me,” how haven’t you noticed? Even now, as he skirts around the fire to put it in front of him, he’s quiet. No more than a shadow himself. He doesn’t say anything, but the way his eyes flicker makes it obvious he understands you.

“Why?” The gun raises, though more as a gesture than a threat; trying your hardest to seem stern— _commanding_.

He blinks, slinking back another step until he’s almost out of the light.

“No, _wait_ ,” he stops, blinking, as you toss the empty pistol to the ground, sitting down beside where he’d put your jacket out on a rock. “I should be thanking you—again.”

When you imagine grounders, you picture broad shoulders like Lincoln, sharp features like Anya, cunning eyes like Lexa—but this young warrior is none of those things. The way the light sits in his eyes is painful; bright, and earnest. As if even with the graying sadness that hunkers like a disease at the edges of his eyes, there is still an insurmountable hope that lives in him.

He reminded you of Jasper—before the end, before you’d twisted the knife that had been lodged in his heart from that very first day on the ground. Since he’d been strung up in a tree as a warning, since he’d screamed and writhed in the nose of the ship that brought him to a planet determined to kill him.

Swallowing hard, you exhale through your nose, “I’m Clarke.”

“ _Klark kom skaikru_.” He parrots back, obviously knowing who you are.

You blink, “You know who I am.”

He nods, before looking sheepish—realizing he gave up his rouse of misunderstanding.

“I don’t know who you are.” You say in lieu of silence.

His lips press together, and then he smiles—impossibly small, but so achingly genuine. “ _Woshunton_ ,” he murmurs hesitantly, his voice actually deeper than you would have guessed. “Wash.” He simplifies, while edging just close enough to be firmly within the firelight.

“Why’re you helping me?” you don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if the ground had taught you anything—it was to be cautious.

“ _Yu laik raun stedaunon_ ,” plucking at his clothing, shifting how he sits, bare toes digging into the dirt before his face settles into something of a frown. “You walk like the dead,” the way he says it makes you understand it’s a translation; waving a hand in front of his eyes in demonstration, “You didn’t see anything, not until the  _canan_.”

How long exactly had he been following you?

You doesn’t respond right away, you watch how his eyes dance off to the side—looking at something in the dark beyond the firelight. Gritting your teeth, you exhale and firm yourself for loneliness.

Self-imposed exile.

“I don’t need your help, Wash.” You don’t—you can’t sit fireside with this boy who thinks he can help you. You’re beyond help.

“You do.” He says it simply, with innocent confusion, “Why do you say you don’t?”

How can you explain? How can you tell him that he reminds you of someone who might as well be dead—he reminds you of what has been lost, slowly at first, and then all at once? Innocence, hope, safety, belief. You don’t know his life, you doesn’t know what he’s been through—but there is still something too  _genuine_  about him that claws at your consciousness. The part of you that thinks your hands are curled claws that will only dig and tear into him if given the chance.

“I want to be alone,” you needs to be alone with the ghosts that follow you, with the weight of your choices. You don’t know where you’re going, but there is no part of your plan that involves a helpful grounder boy.

“You want to be alone,  _sha_ ,” Wash repeats slowly, pursing his lips, “But you  _need_  my help.” His smile makes it seem like he’s won something, like you will suddenly see everything his way.

Before you can say anything otherwise, before you can shake your head and push him away further, he’s shuffling over to the salve that would ease the burn in your arm.

“ _Canan_  have dirty claws, rotting,” lifting the cool green paste, the menthol smell assaulting your nose. “Many, many  _gona_  die because of small  _etchas_.” His eyebrows lift, his eyes knowing, and something about the half smile on his face reminds you of Lexa—which hardens your jaw, and flares your nostrils.

You don’t want to think about Lexa now, you don’t want to think about a _stupid_ girl, and a _stupid_ kiss.

“ _Fis_  yourself, so you can be alone.” Even though you’re clearly older, you suddenly feels like the child; like you’re throwing a temper tantrum, and you’re being placated by the babysitter.

Pressing the balm against the inflamed red of the wound, the soothing is almost instantaneous. A numbing chill that seeps into the skin and deeper—into the muscles. Relaxing back into the cradle of rocks beside the fire, you watch how Wash settles like a bird onto a branch. Relaxed, yet somehow ready to move—on guard.

“You’re a warrior?” He seems young, but Anya’s second had been younger—still a child. More so than this boy-warrior.

“A  _seken_.” He supplies, digging through a bag that he has on his back—it was thin and nearly flat against his back. Obviously meant to be unobtrusive.

“Where’s your mentor?” You know that a second had someone who guided them—someone who molded them into warriors. Indra had never let Octavia far from her side—until she’d abandoned her all together in the mine.

“War.” One simple word that manages to bring all the hairs on the back of your neck up. A crawl of fear turns in your stomach like a circling feline, plucking at the edges of your gut with pricks and pulls.

“What?” Exhaling the word, with no real sentiment behind it, “War? With who?”

Had everything really crumbled so horribly that you’d walked away from your people, leaving them to war? You can imagine Lexa leaving you at the mountain, turning her back and walking away—leaving you for dead—but had she forgone any alliance and simply attacked? This boy-warrior looks up from his pack, his brows tucking, and his head tipping slightly.

“West,” and like a great relief, the air leaves your lungs. Air you haven’t even realized you’d been holding inside. As Wash crosses his legs, he extends a piece of jerky—the meat smells heavenly after having only had handfuls of berries for the last three days. Debating with yourself inwardly, you finally reach out and takw the food.

“This doesn’t mean I need you hanging around.”

He snorts, tearing off a piece of meat with his teeth, “Don’t  _want_  me hanging around,” he clarifies, cheekily, “But _need_ _me to_.”

* * *

**The Republic, unknown. 99.05 AUS**. 

Peter has always considered himself generally moral—he tried pretty hard not to lie, he returned people’s things around the time he promised, and he went out of his way to help the elderly. These had all been instill in him by his mother—a caring battle axe of a woman—and it had taken him this long to realize he is a damned lying bastard.

But epiphanies like that are reserved for after the school day.

“Why a conch shell?” Peter asks, while finishing his short sentence on the board, the question mark slanted as he turned to them. “What does it represent?”

Looking out over the sea of only half-interested eyes, he looks for any hint of engagement. One willing to step out from the pack and speak. Of course, there is no one, there very rarely is.

“Do they need it?” He prods further, slipping past the first line of desks, heading toward the back of the room, pretending that he doesn’t notice pieces of papers being slipped away, and conversations ceasing. “What purpose does it bring? Come on, guys, _think_.”

Peter loves teaching, he loves guiding the next generation with provocative thought, with debate and knowledge—if only they were willing to _participate_.

“You’re going to make me do it.” He warns cheekily, while moving back toward the front of the class, and then abruptly sitting down in one of the few empty desks. “Rodrick.”

The dark haired boy in question sits straighter, leaving the well-lined doodle lining the edges of his paper. “Yeah, Mr. Marowisk?”

“What do you think the conch shell represents?” Quieter, softer, as if this was a one on one conversation, and not one being watched by the whole class.

“I don’t know.” Eyes downturned, hand raised to scratch at the back of his neck, “I’m not real good at English.”

“Let me be the judge of that, Rod.” Smiling, Peter began tapping his fingers against the desktop he was occupying, “The conch shell; who has is?”

“Whoever wants to talk.” Brighter, stronger, this is something he knows—or at least, something he knows he knows. “They need to conch shell if they wanna talk.”

“Bingo!” Peter snapped and smiled, “To talk to the group, they need the conch shell. Why is that important?”

“If everyone’s talking—no one’s listening.” The end tipped up into a question, but it was exactly what Peter wanted to hear.

“Exactly!” Slapping his hand lightly on the desk, he gave Rodrick a thumbs up and moved back toward the front of the room. “If everyone’s talking, no one’s listening. The conch shell is order and structure—it is a line drawn in the sand that even the youngest boy knows. If you have the conch shell, your words have an audience.”

At his podium Peter fingeres the edge of his ancient copy of _Lord of the Flies_. The students all had fresh reprints, on brand new paper, and dark black ink—his copy had been printed in 2007, over a hundred years ago.

“Why don’t they just elect a president?” Christina, one of his brightest students, asks from her first row seat—over brushed blonde bangs brushing her eyelashes with each subtle shift of her face.

“Imagine for a moment everyone in this room is stranded on an island,” spreading his hands wide, he devours how they glance around at each other, really imagining it. “Everything is chaotic, and everyone’s scared; who’s in charge?”

Peter relishes the scattered hands that jolt into the air, his bolder students.

“Well, all nine of you can’t be president. How do you narrow it down? An election? A coup?” The pages of his novel card softly, “And we’ve already established that if everyone’s talking, no one’s listening. How do you decide?”

“The people decide.” You expect it to be Christina, or James, or any of your honor bound students—but it’s Rodrick. “But if everything is mad crazy, and nobodies keeping order—there’s going to be no one to lead.”

“Exactly.” Peter laughs, “The conch shells is how those who wish to govern, and those who wish to be governed interact. Otherwise everything would be as Mr. DeAccio says,” grinning broadly, “ _mad crazy_. Order is the foundation of leadership, it must be established before titles and tenures.”

The sharp cry of the bell.

“And our own order says you’re free to go; questions ten through twenty. Full sentences, please.” They’re already filing out of the room, chatting loudly, and throwing waves his direction. Peter offers them a broad grin as he plops down behind his desk and pushes his lesson plan to the far corner.

The heat from outside is oppressive, and the lukewarm breeze can only do so much through the cracked windows. Two more classes, and then he can go home for the day. Usually he would only have one more, but he had agreed to take over a friend’s advance placement modern Republic history—a subject he wasn’t very familiar with, beyond what all Republic citizens knew.

How bad could it be?

The answer? Bad.

Tucking his _Lord of the Flies_ into his satchel, he slings it over his shoulder and begins the long shuffle through the building, into the southernmost wing of the school. The building still holds scorch marks from the bombs, still retains the film of history at the corners, but so much of it has been covered with a fresh coat of mint-green paint. Something that had been chosen because it was supposed to _sooth_.

The class is already full of older children—seniors who are getting ready for their placement exams—some already wearing Republic cadet uniforms. The dull gray somehow sucking the color from the room. Clearing his throat, Peter puts his bag down on the desk, and pulls over the classes textbook. A detailed map of what had once been the state of Kansas sits proudly on the cover—MODERN REPUBLIC HISTORY, written large and dark across the pale front.

“So, Mr. Rander is out today—his new baby is doing her best at keeping him up, and is, in many ways, succeeding.” Flipping open the cover, Peter scans the table of contents and inwardly curses for his disinterest in the subject. “So, what are we up to?”

These teenagers are focused, their eyes sharp, waiting for something to gain their attention—Peter feels like he’s suddenly on display. An animal shoved into a cage at the zoo. Those who are obviously slanted toward the military barely blink—their books already open, their pens in hand. They don’t help.

“The Reconciliation Act.” Someone from the back supplies. It’s a girl with her hair thrown into a haphazard bun, dark strands falling into surprisingly green eyes—her skin dark and smooth, her smile tight lipped and barely there. There’s something about her that keep Peter’s attention, if only for a moment, before he looks down to card through the pages. He can’t miss the _Chapter seven: Wastelander Reconciliation Act of 29.03_ if he tried.

Now this is something he has an opinion on, albeit not a popular one. Smoothing his fingers over the very ornate picture of men in bright colored uniforms, wrangling dirty malnourished natives into chains and cages. Not a very accurate representation, but that has never been much of a concern with the senators.

“Alright then, the _Reconciliation Act_ —…”

 


	2. tomorrow is just tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where she’s from, the stag means safety.” The voice isn’t particularly loud, but in the silence, it sounds as loud as a gunshot. “After the bombs, when the fire settled, the deer were the first to know what was safe to eat, where was safe to sleep.” Spinning around to find Indra stepping past the drawn door drape, her hand sitting loosely at the hilt of her sword. Despite the armor, despite the kohl dragged across her eyes, and the scars at her cheeks—she seems different. Not softer, no, that wasn’t right—relaxed. Her shoulders weren’t drawn tightly, and her eyes weren’t dark daggers—appraising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Chapter two, so ridiculously long after chapter one, so much has been going on in life I just haven’t had time to sit down and write. If you haven’t re-read chapter one, you’ll notice I switched from third-person, back to second-person. It just felt too choppy when I was writing, and I figured it was still early enough to do something about it. If there are any perspective chances, there will be a note before the passage. Keep an eye on those heading crawls, it gives a better idea of time passage; since around the same amount of time has passed here as well as on the show. I truly hope to be updating a little more frequently, because everything should be calming down a little.
> 
> As for the show itself—I haven’t watched any yet, just because I haven’t been able to sit down and watch. I can’t wait to, and while I know most of what has happened, because of tumblr—I can’t wait. So excited. Anyway, here's a doodle of [Royal kom whetkru](http://civilorange.tumblr.com/post/137519679664/hello-everyone-no-i-havent-vanished-from-the)

**Lekgedakru territory, Eastern United States, 99.02 AUS.**

Time passes like a broken slideshow; flickers in the dark of places, and people. Of trees plucked from the ground by wind, and lakes frozen solid by winter storms. You knew it hadn’t been the smartest choice to walk away with only shoulders heavy with guilt, with no destination in mind, no plan in action. You’d been so numb those first few weeks, so much so that you hadn’t been able to feel the wrongness of the solitude—the strange stillness that followed you like ghosts linked with you by fickle fingers and disquieted eyes. You had set your eyes forward and been unable to feel how the choice stuck in your heel like a burr—a constant reminder you’d failed to notice until it had wedged below your skin. Tucked in beside your hollow sky bones.

You hadn’t realized how you hated the silence until it was gone—until you’d been saved from the trilling fear by a boy. A boy with guileless eyes and a shattered smile; he added no noise of his own, stepping between branches, and breathing so light you could never hear him trailing behind you. Washington—Wash—was a shadow; but what he didn’t add in natural noise, he made up for with talking—he seemed to fear the silence as readily as you did.

Hands tucked away into the pockets of his fur vest, arm tangled with his messenger’s satchel, he’d chitter through the afternoons—pointing out landmarks, talking about battles that had come and gone, of people who had fallen and those who had stood victorious. You’d asked him only a few days into walking _who knows where_ why he knew so much about the land—did all grounders know these things? He’d looked downright _prideful_ when he answered, “A _trikova_ has to know the land, _lukot_.” Your picked brow had spurred him further, “A scout, Clarke.”

A _scout_. Wash had gone on to explain that his mentor hadn’t been a warrior in the traditional sense—he’d been a healer, a man who had saved whole battlefronts with his quick hands and his calm façade. A mentor he’d lost to the mountain many seasons ago—who’d become a reaper. Your heart aches at the mention, it jumps and plummets without any prompting; the tightness around your throat throbs and your air slips away like forgotten things. “But,” Wash had continued; his shattered smile filling in with something bright and untouchable, something so _very_ precious, “I got him back. Rescued him from the tunnels.”

 _I got him back_. It was said with the weight of knowing how it felt to have someone slip through their fingers, like granules of sand. Someone who had slipped away and slept somewhere in the black of his mind—a nightmare waiting in the wings to fracture restless nights.

You didn’t learn for another week that it had been his sister—a girl who’d only just begun to live, bright and joyful. That he had promised to watch out for her—to protect her—and he’d failed. He’d held her broken body against his chest and there had been no matching heartbeat. He doesn’t say how she died—and you can’t bring yourself to ask, you can only walk beside him—the length of your arm touching his, and when the silence began to mount—this time you talked.

About how there was no wind in the sky—a concept that Wash had been adamantly against; he’d seen the cloud blow like rivers in the sky during storms. You’d never believed the grounders to be _stupid_ , no, too many of them had eyes glinting with savage intelligence, but you’d always thought them…firmly _entrenched_ in their beliefs. In the mythical, in the legendary; but Wash asked questions, he nodded and followed along.

He wanted to know how the Ark farmed, how their air was made, how they lived without sunlight; it allowed you to remember the good things, The things you’d forgotten the moment you stepped out of the dropship and had to fight to stay alive—you could remember soccer games and earth skills classes, you could remember afternoons in the medical wards helping your mother.

It’s never on the nights you remember the Ark fondly that you have nightmares, no—it’s when the silence lingers despite the conversation. A rattling buzz just behind your ear that thrummed and hummed in ever pause, in every quiet moment. Those were the nights you found yourself snared by horrors—sometimes it was your father. Drifting through the vacuum of space. Sometimes it was Wells, or Charlotte, eyes blank and faces drawn, the acid fog rolling in behind them. But most of the time—it’s the mountain.

With yellowing lights swaying above, and flickering off the pale faces of those who would never know the sunlight above them. Their skin smooth and unblemished—wax like. Figurines of people, their faces perfectly carved, lifelike in every way. But the mountain is peeled open, the ducts in the ceiling, and the cement walls all pulled away by bloody hands and savage fingers. The sun blisters, and the wind howls—all the wax people within the mountain melt; their skin bubbling and slicking away, dripping down their cheeks and marring their open mouths.

You bolted awake those nights, fingers hooked into claws, eyes wet and sightless, and it had been Wash who had kept you present. Who had caged your hands inside his own, had kept them harmless and away from where you’d wanted to scratch at your eyes or the edges of your mouth. He’d murmur low things in _trigedasleng_ , little lilting phrases that had been meaningless to you—but the buzzing would fold away, tucked back into the black of your mind.

This boy—fifteen, nowhere close to sixteen—would hum, something soothing and low. Even when your hands would stop shivering, and your fingers would relax; he wouldn’t move away. Would lay flat on his back beside you, looking at the stars. “I have them too, _lukot_.” Quiet, as if almost warriors like him should admit to such things—such weaknesses. “I don’t like being alone after.” And that would be it—whenever you’d awake from horrors, both remembered and imagined, Wash would keep you present, and then stay with you. His arm warm against your own, barely brushing but still comforting—he never asked what you dreamed, never chased your demons, but he kept them away after you’d woken.

“I’m meeting someone,” he hedges after nearly six weeks of winding through the wilds; it’s absurd that you can tell that he’s taller, though his shoulders hunch a little to decrease the difference. You’re both sitting outside the medical tent of a small village—a sickness having ravaged many of the adults, a whooping cough that produced a yellow mucus. You’d been here for the better part of the last five days, and many of the patients you’d seen have begun the climb to recovery—breathing easier, walking around unhindered.

Wash had seemed tentative the whole while—sitting anxiously at your side while looking off toward the trees. You didn’t say anything; you simply touched his shoulder, brought his attention back and search his eyes for anything that you needed to be aware of. Fear, or anger, or—anything. But there was just an uncertainty.

“Someone?” You ask, folding the boiled rags neatly together, tucking them into the bottom of the satchel you’d been given. Medicinal herbs you’d collected, labeled neatly. Looking up for a moment, finding his gaze, you continue, “From this village?”

He sits heavily, his longer limbs folding awkwardly as he nudges his boot with a firm finger—you’d convinced him to put boots on after a while, fearing for his toes when winter came. You knew, logically, that he’d survived this long without your incessant worrying, but you couldn’t help it—you’d spent more time with this almost warrior than you had any of the delinquents. The ground forges bonds quickly.

“No, _sis_.” He swallows and shrugs, not looking at you, “He was with me before; he had to bring a message back home.” Narrowing your eyes, you can pull apart meanings easily enough—before you, back home—TonDC.

“What was the message?”

He looking up through thick lashes, “That the mountain fell,” dark eyes unsure, “That you lived.”

 _A scout, Clarke._ He’d told you, so many weeks ago, what his skill set was. He knew the land, he knew the history, because a scout’s currency was simple—information. You had never wondered why he never had to go home—why he never had to leave; you’d always just been so happy that he stayed.

Anger flushes through you, not necessarily at Wash—though there is some for him—but at _yourself_. For being the fool again, for blinding yourself to everything you’ve learned on the ground because somehow you thought _this time_ was different. That for once you didn’t have to protect your vulnerabilities from killing blows. That toxicity that lingers in your blood pulses with strength, rushing through your veins and darkening the blue of your eyes.

“ _She_ sent you.” There is no doubt in your mind who _she_ is, but Wash’s face plucks for a moment before it dawns on him; he nods, confidently at first, until it tappers off into something almost involuntary.

“ _Sha_ ,” pulling his lip between his teeth, you want to flick his jaw like you always do when he does that—worried that he’ll bite through it again, like he had once when startled, but you stop yourself. Your fingers curl, your lips thin.

“Well, I guess you’d better go meet _he_ —,” you don’t get to finish _her_ , because as you spin on your heel to walk away, satchel already set in place, you find yourself nose first into a mostly bare chest. Thick white scars knotted and raised from skin that is darker than a summer tan; muscles pulling the skin taut even from something as simple as breathing. Looking up you find yourself snared by eyes the darkest blue you’d ever seen—like the water at the bottom of the ocean.

“ _Mourah_ ,” Wash yelps, “ _Hod up,_ ” the boy situates himself between you and the walking mountain of muscle, and you can see him in total. About two meters tall, but lithe, lean and sculpt—twin flecks of white touch his bottom lip, and when they crawl slightly into a smirk, you can tell they are not human teeth—something predatory, a wolf or large cat.

You recognize him—well, not _him_ —but the design of kohl around his eyes, and down his cheeks, the crimson fabric looped around his neck, and trailing down behind his body. You’d seem a handful of warriors with these same characteristics—always lingering around _Lexa_. Your eyes dart off toward the forest, looking for signs of the commander, but the quiet of the village prevails.

“Clarke,” you turn back to look at the tree boy, the way he’s dwarfed by the silent warrior behind him, though he hardly seems worried. Hardly concerned. “This is Moira, he’s one of _heda_ ’s _jusbrotas_.”

 _Jusbrotas_ — _jus_ was blood, and _bro_ , was brother. Blood brother?

“ _Heda_ left him with me, when she told me to learn of the mountain’s fate.” There’s words catching your attention _left_ , and _fate_. You’d been living in your own world since you killed everyone inside Mt. Weather; you’d sidestepped the gathering militias, you’d ignored the village gossip. The world turned, the landscape of the ground so vastly different now that the shadow of the mountain has vanished.

“The chieftain had no use of me once I told her of the mountain, told her you lived. I’m not—there was nothing waiting for me in _Tondisi_ , so I stayed.” Wash’s hands wring together, the sword at his waist clinking against the metal mesh on his pants. He’s never looked more like a child than he does now—nervous, and waiting for a reprimand. He refuses to look at you—but the quiet dark eyes of the man behind him haven’t left your face.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You wish the world was black and white again—that the lines of division were stark and bright, simple and true. Ground and sky, good and evil, alive and dead.

“I—,” squinting, he smiles, but it’s the half-smile you’ve forgotten he is capable of because he’s so much brighter now—he smiles so much wider. “I liked pretending. Pretending that people weren’t dying, that everyone I knew wasn’t at war—that I hadn’t been left _behind_.” Watching someone break is so much worse than seeing someone _broken_ —you can see how Wash is splitting apart at his seams, at the places he’d hastily stitched himself back together because he didn’t know how to be any other way.

He’s looking at you like you’ve already decided to leave; like you’re someone he has to remember because there are no longer any reminders. The tight clench of your teeth is gone, the bitter ash on your tongue evaporated—you feel lighter now, because you’ve let go of something you hadn’t realized was clenched tight into the curl of your hand. The idea that this was all temporary. That’d you’d simply been walking slowly toward oblivion.

You and Wash both have some growing to do.

Some trust to mend.

There’s nothing graceful in how you tug him into your body, wrapping arms around him hastily so that you can curl fingers into the gamey fur of his vest. He makes a sound you know he’ll swear he didn’t—something like a sob and a sigh mixed together. He clutches you closely, somehow nearly taller than you—everything that had been wire and bone has become muscle.

“I’m not leaving you behind,” you whisper into his shoulder, eyes squeezing shut because you don’t want to do something stupid like _cry_ , “That’s not what we do.”

It is so strange to pick someone. Wash wasn’t a delinquent, he wasn’t some space walker tumbling from the clouds, he wasn’t an alliance of circumstance—he was just—he was _there._ He walked in just as everyone else was walking away; he lifted the stone on your chest just enough so that you could breathe a little easier.

How long you embrace, you don’t know, but when you pull back Moira is watching, quiet eyes distant and removed, one hand clasping the wrist of the other. There’s nothing _menacing_ about him, oddly enough. The quirk of lips could be mistaken for a smile if those jungle cat teeth weren’t front and center. If his dark eyes weren’t marked with the tri slashes of the commander, his shoulders bright with the crimson of her cloak. Lexa’s fingerprints mark everything on the ground; smudges of her touch left behind no matter how long it’s been.

The message he’s extending now seems so utterly harmless; but you know it is anything but. Worlds have crumbled for less than what can be written on a slip of paper—especially one balanced as precariously as this one.

“For me?” You ask, and he nods—watching you like statues do the living, without judgement, without movement. “From?” You don’t want to know, but you _do_ —the feeling skitters through your bones, to the tips of your fingers where you’ve reached out to grasp the note. Moira lifts two solemn fingers and runs them in an arch above his right eye, along the top of his thick eyebrow.

Your own brows tuck, “What?”

Wash jumps in to supply an answer, “Chieftain Indra.” Suddenly brighter, his eyes red and glossy, his nose running just slightly, but he’s aware and present and wondering. “ _Jusbrotas_ don’t speak; they hold _heda_ ’s secrets.” The man smiles again, though a little more notably; all white teeth and foreboding eyes.

You’ll wish later you’d refused the message, that you’d simply turned away and continued to live in this world of passing acknowledgement—where wars weren’t happening, and genocide was a distant memory. But you can’t—you are _wanheda_ —and more importantly, you are Clarke. Someone who cares too damned much, even when you shouldn’t. Even when it should had bled from your veins ages ago, yet still ingers like a disease.

You’ll wish that you didn’t how Wash deflates when Indra writes of _heda_ , of passing spirits and ending dynasties. His eyes dull and fade at the edges, his lips press together and when his blinks rapidly, you pretend you don’t see how the tears catch in his lashes. You’re suddenly suffocating on the _idea_ that Lexa is dead—that she stepped away and got herself killed on the other side of the damned country.

Somehow—idiotically—you thought you’d feel it. Like some unspoken price of lives tied together with red twine and broken promises. But there was nothing—you were healing village children, and she was fighting wars. You were trying to forget and she—you suppose she was too.

When Wash says, “ _Lukot_?” with a quiver, you nod before you realize it.

“Guess we’re heading to TonDC,”

* * *

**_Tondisi_ ** **, Trigedakru territory, Eastern United States, 99.03 AUS.**

The first time you’d walked into this tent it had been to the sight of a girl not any older than you perched on her throne of driftwood and buck antlers—her face passive, and her war paint fierce; with eyes like green fire, that burn you still if you linger on their color too long. This time, the throne is empty—it seems cold and untouched somehow, even if there is no true reason to assume that. The torches around it are smothered, their smoke drifting through the air as a reminder of things past—of things snuffed out and lingering. The war table is forgotten and without order—pieces of all texture and color shoved together at the edges of the board, some going so far as to tumble off. One piece does stand out—a golden stag carved from dark stone, flecks of the natural color peeking out from behind the thick paint.

 _Heda_.

You don’t have to be well versed in the mechanisms of war to know who that is supposed to represent—it’s obvious, even as a small animal figurine, the regality lingering in the slope of the antlers, and the arch of the beast’s back. It is tipped just enough to balance precariously on the edge of its base; leaning against a pale curve of stone, a fox or weasel. Both seem close to tipping over the edge, almost as if they teeter with every exhaled breath—you don’t realize you’re reaching out to curl fingers around them until their weight in is your hand.

Cool, and solid.

If you hadn’t been familiar with the warm give of Lexa’s skin, the fluttering muscles on her shoulders and arms, it would have seemed accurate.

Cool, and solid.

No, that was the grounder warrior who had put logic, and numbers, and consequences at the forefront of their mind, and shoved that soft warm girl away someplace to die.

You’re familiar with that kind of death—when _wanheda_ is the hard truth of you, and _Clarke_ becomes almost a fantasy. Someone who lingers in the background, lost to the hard reality of the ground—Clarke belongs in her box in the sky, _wanheda_ has dominion here.

“Where she’s from, the stag means safety.” The voice isn’t particularly loud, but in the silence, it sounds as loud as a gunshot. “After the bombs, when the fire settled, the deer were the first to know what was safe to eat, where was safe to sleep.” Spinning around to find Indra stepping past the drawn door drape, her hand sitting loosely at the hilt of her sword. Despite the armor, despite the kohl dragged across her eyes, and the scars at her cheeks—she seems different. Not softer, no, that wasn’t right—relaxed. Her shoulders weren’t drawn tightly, and her eyes weren’t dark daggers—appraising.

“Safety.” Spinning the figure between your fingers, “Not the word I would have chosen to describe her.” No. You’d pick _dangerous_ , it was a descriptor that even when you’d been considering her as something more, you hadn’t been able to forget. It was simply too harshly marked into the lines of her person—her shoulders, and arms, her eyes, and lips.

Soft, tentative lips.

You exhale, releasing that line of thought, “where she’s from?” pause, “isn’t she from here?”

Indra shakes her head, “She’s northern; _azgeda_. She chose to lead the _trikru_.” Your brow furrows, and you know you must look confused because she takes pity; walking closer, and pressing her free hand against the edge of the war table. “The commander is usually found young—an infant, or a toddler—found by their own people, and raised to lead.”

A dark finger runs along the uneven wood, and when she comes in contact with an oddly shaped dark piece, she picks it up to consider it.

“She was—different. Wily, and nomadic. Anya didn’t find her until she was almost ten summers.” You don’t know how to take the lingering thoughts at the corners of Indra’s eyes—heavy _and sad_. You don’t know how to feel about the _was,_ instead of _is_ when talking about Lexa. She shakes herself from her thoughts easily enough, lips pressing—dark eyes focused.

“The tribes don’t know how to handle _wanheda_ on their own,” you hadn’t liked how blunt Indra was before—how she spoke with conviction, how she threw herself behind her words. But you can appreciate it now, how her words are steady and smooth. “Their example has found herself beyond the edges of the world; death clinging to every mention of her.”

She doesn’t say Lexa’s name—not out loud—but the resounding knowledge of who _she_ is seems unimportant to point out—to put letters and deeds to someone who lingers like an idea even when a thousand miles away.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” Snapping should make you feel better—righteous and true, but you just feel tired. “She betrayed me, remember? I don’t owe her anything.”

Indra looks at you—really _looks_ at you—and you feel small, and still the teenager you are—not _wanheda_ , or the leader of the sky people, or the girl with a thousand deaths to her name.

It makes you like Indra more—you’re _Clarke_ , even when she’s wary, even when she’s curt.

It is refreshing.

“No one has said anything of a debt, _Klark kom skaikru_.” She puts the pawn down a little too hard, until it spins off the edge and shatters on the ground.

More fragile than it looked.

If you dropped this golden stag—would it shatter too?

“Think—the commander isn’t here to curb the harsher tendencies of the tribes. You’re dangerous; in ways they don’t know how to battle. You’ve fallen from the sky, and have reigned fire in as long as you’ve had feet on the ground.”

Your spine straightens, “That isn’t fair, Indra.”

She laughs—this hard, serious warrior has a laugh like bells in the spring, and it’s more startling than a room of your most recent dead. That such a laugh can exist inside such a severe person; you don’t know of that’s something to find hope in, or just more sadness, “The world doesn’t care about fairness, Clarke. It doesn’t care that standing tall for your people, means your shadow falls on someone else.”

Her hands fold behind her being, her posture still proud and uncompromising, but it lives in her eyes—earthy shades of brown that are impossibly lighter than you’d originally thought. More amber and gold, than darkness and stone. Indra’s face is placid and sure, her eyebrows pinched just enough that she doesn’t seem concerned.

“They never called her _wanheda_ because she already had a name— _heda_ —but it wasn’t just loyalty, and love, that made the twelve clans fall in line.” A thousand and one truths live in Indra, and she’s choosing which are her’s to tell, “It was fear. They feared her—a girl of only ten or so summers, who had killed a thousand warriors in one night. Anya presented her to the _trikru_ after that—had strapped a child into armor and told the world to bow.”

You can’t even say how the ground still surprises you—how slaughter, and genocide, and sacrifice sleeps on everyone’s tongue like a simple solution. _A thousand_. You know it must be hyperbole, that it isn’t possible to kill that many people alone—but, hadn’t you eradicated a whole people with the push of a lever? Hadn’t Bellamy’s hand been warm and firm over yours when you’d pressed down—deciding that you cherished your people more than those who would harm them?

But— _a thousand_?

“And now she’s gone—and you’re here.” She looks at you now, measuring you, weighing your worth—and there’s worry in her frown, concern an agitated tick in her cheek. “ _Wanheda_ —slayer of the mountain—you’re known across all twelve tribes, even those who’d never known the shadow of the _maun_ whisper your name.”

Lips pressed tight, eyes narrowed, you can feel your heart jump, a heavy press against the brittle cage of your ribs. “I did what I had to do,” like releasing air from a balloon, the words hiss free from where they’re trapped behind your teeth. “I had no choice.”

 _No choice_. How many monsters were made because they had _no choice_?

How many monsters forgot themselves under the burdens they told themselves they were bearing for their people?

“You misunderstand, Clarke; I’m not condemning you, I’m warning you.” Exhaling, her hand twitches like she means to reach out, but it settles loosely on the hilt of her blade, shoulders shifting in some kind of confirmation. The closest thing to a fidget Indra will ever manage, “The _azgeda_ have placed a bounty on your head, they wish to claim _wanheda_ , and through that—through _you_ —the fear that will follow. It will allow them to shatter this coalition as they’ve wished to since Lexa made them swear fealty.”

It was like walking through the night with your eyes closed—darker than dark—and yet somehow still managing to be blindsided by the darkness when you open your eyes. The name hits you like a solid fist somewhere in the gut—it’s been months now since you’ve heard it, even if you’ve whispered it in your mind at night. In nightmares, and dreams. Indra says her name with emphasis— _Leksa_ —and you swallow hard.

“That can’t happen, Clarke.”

In those four words you understand who Indra is—who she has always been behind wary eyes, and gruff disagreements. She somehow still believes in this damned world—believes in whatever tomorrow Lexa had been crafting with blood, and death, and broken promises. She bears the marks of cruelty willingly, because somehow—she still thinks there is something worth it waiting at the end. She hopes, and prays, and believes—and suddenly, as she had made you feel young, you now suddenly feel ancient.

Because tomorrow is just tomorrow—the day after today.

It doesn’t mean that the sun with shine brighter, or that the thousands of dead you leave in your wake will smell any better—things rot as readily tomorrow, as they do today. And you want to shove that under Indra’s nose—you want to shatter whatever illusion of the future she has, because they’ve already been shattered for you.

Lexa betrayed you, and you committed genocide.

And she didn’t even have the decency to stay alive to be burdened with the guilt.

“Anything can happen,” you supply, suddenly wary all the way to your bones, tired in your very blood.

And just like that, the soft edges fold away into sharp points, the dark in her amber eyes grows, and grows, and _grows_ , until you’re looking into black pupils and war torn darkness. This is a general of the tree people, this is a woman who has killed, and killed, and _killed_ , and things like that can’t be forgotten—even when tomorrow still lingers like fool’s gold.

“Again, you misunderstand, _wanheda_.” She burrs, lips barely moving as her knuckles whiten against the hilt of her blade, “I won’t let it happen.”

You believe her—you don’t know why, but you do.

“I fought this coalition longer than most; I thought it the foolish dream of a girl who didn’t know what it was to fight for something,” The sentiment is like a weight added to her shoulders, causing her to lean inward slightly, before bracing herself and standing tall. Even when you think the worst of Lexa, you can’t imagine her not holding the weight of her society on her shoulders—it was just the air of grave importance that clung to her skin. That lived in her eyes. But Indra had known a different Lexa—younger, in more than just age. “ _Ah won kru_ , that was how she pitched it to Anya; a one people. She told us she had no time for the imaginary lines we fought over,”

A one people.

It seems too childish to belong to Lexa, too abstract and untouchable, and yet—you can imagine it. Someone years younger with the same severe green eyes, with the same burn, the same unflinching conviction. The very same conviction that had sentenced your people to death—her unwavering desire to do right by her people. To save them regardless of what the cost.

“What do you want from me, Indra?” You’re tired, you’re so very exhausted and it has nothing to do with how far you’ve walked, or how long you’ve struggled. It is something else, something consuming.

“I’m sending a _gonakru_ west; mostly healers and scouts. I need to know what happened out there,” _need_ , there’s something in that choice of word, but you can’t decide what. “I want you to lead them.”

You nearly sputter— _nearly_ , “What? No,” Squinting, it somehow trails off into, “Why me?”

“I can’t wrangle the clans with the _azgeda kwin_ breathing down our necks for _wanheda_ ; too many are willing to fall into her shadow now that it is believed that the commander’s spirit has moved on.” _Many believe_ , nothing definitive, nothing absolute. Indra pauses again, “They fear you—and to many, that simply means you must die. Those going west are those I can trust; those loyal to _heda_ ,”

Walking away like this seems different, somehow more permanent, more damning. Like somehow _this_ is when you’ve turned your back on your people, not three months ago when you turned away at the gate, or five days ago when you decided to come back to _Tondisi_ and not the Ark.

“Your people want peace, they want trade, and right now _azgeda_ thinks them children with their heads still in the clouds; they’re safer with you away.” You can see a brewing _something_ in Indra’s expression, a silenced _but_ that hasn’t been spoken, but she’s holding firm, keeping whatever doubt she has locked away someplace unspoken. She’s desperate to heal her armies, to find out the truths that lingers at the edges of their world—

 _To find Lexa_.

She doesn’t say it, but that was what lived in that _need_ —it was a desperate hope for someone to live, to feel vindicated in ignoring the loose depictions of death, the promise of unfulfilled desires.

“Do you think she’s alive?” Simple, plain.

And Indra laughs again—a surprised hitching sound as she turns to look at the throne; where an arrogant girl should be with her war paint and the chip on her shoulder.

There’s something like pride, something like fondness as she looks at that throne, “I don’t think she knows how to die.”

* * *

Sitting outside the commander’s tent, you can observe everything from one place—how warriors gather and disperse, how they shoulder logs and metal frames. No one seems to have to be told where to go; all settle easily into their tasks. No one has told you what you’re doing, or where you’re going. Indra had gone off to settle some scuffle or another.

You just had to— _wait_.

You’ve been watching one group in particular. Their clothing moss green, and cream fur, their hair dark, and their kohl thick ash—they seem the only gathering that don’t flit about. Stationary and sure.

One in particular has your attention.

She’s pretty more than she is beautiful—something delicate in the curve of her cheeks, or the bow of her lips. Tall—easily a head taller than you—but her frame in slight and lithe, smooth curves where every other grounder you’ve met has been hard edges and strong frames. She’s willow trees and windy nights, but despite all that there’s still something— _sharp_ about her. An intricate dagger’s edge, or the tip of the guillotine’s blade—something final and foreboding. Her eyes haven’t left you from where she lingers across the camp—holding court with five or six others, though it is clear she isn’t listening, only bobbing her head occasionally with a terse word.

“That’s _Rouyahl_ ,” Wash supplies while shoving another piece of bread into his already half-filled mouth, crumbles tumbling out and onto the front of his shirt as he continues. “She’s a  _whetkru_   _bahds_ —one of the king's best hunters.”

As if she’s knowingly proving Wash’s point, Royal plucks the quiver of arrows from where it rests on the ground and slings it gracefully over her shoulder, in her hand is an impressive long bow—a tassel of little malformed copper pieces and bright hawk feathers at the top.

“And she’s coming with us?” You know the answer before he responds, because this is _you_ —after all—who else would you have to watch your back but another glowering attractive grounder with a penchant for glaring?

Wash pops a berry into his mouth next, smacking his lips, “ _Sha_ , she’s supposed to go west.” Turning to look at you, there’s a tension in his shoulders that you can’t ignore this time. “Chieftain Indra’s orders.”

The implication is clear—it’s the same one that has been lingering for the last two months—like a door that closes and takes all the air in your lungs with it, leaving you cold and breathless.

No one has heard from the front—bodies are being brought back, wounds trickling in, but there is no _information_. Only garbled half-truths that grow and shrink with the days—some remember monsters instead of men, some say the land is dead out west, that they battle their minds instead.

So many say Lexa is dead—cut down in battle, seen by fistfuls of warriors.

But every once in a while, someone has a clear memory—of a living _heda_ , of battle plans, and sharp determination. The distance is too great, the time gap too grand for any clear communication.

You never know how to feel, it’s a hazy chill in your chest that exists even when you don’t want it to—it lingers and seeps slowly into your bones, so that you can feel it with every step you take.

You don’t want her _dead_ —or maybe you do—maybe there’s some sinister part of you that feels gratification when you hear how she fell boneless to the ground—held down beneath a foreign soldier’s boot who knew nothing about the lives she ruined—she was just another mongrel.

But then you remember yourself—you remember _not everyone, not you_ and soft lips, and how her eyes had cracked as she walked away. How you could see her skin peel away from her bones, and how her iron spine had shivered as she left—a _stupid_ girl, who you can’t wish dead. Who you can’t hope lived.

You feel weightless and detached from the feeling either way—living through the elation and horror in those around you.

“You’re going to get sick,” you say instead of everything plinking around inside.

Wash looks at you, nearly the same height now, and you know he _knows_ —you know he’s remembering how he’d held you when you woke screaming, how he sat with his back to you when you bathed because you didn’t want to be alone. He _knows_ , and he is too young to _know_.

“I’m growing,” another berry into his mouth, “We can’t all scowl from chest level.”

Shoving an elbow into his ribs, he huffs with exaggeration, standing silently with you—watching the gathering warriors. Large hard men and women ready for battles at the edges of the world—you’d spent the last week arguing with yourself on why this was the right thing to do, the right course of action.

“I feel like I’m going against my mentor’s wishes,” Wash says quietly, that _something_ that has always existed in his eyes growing. “He didn’t want me following him to war—he…he wanted to protect me.”

“Wash,” you don’t want to cause him this conflict, don’t want him burdened with doubt— _he’s_ —you don’t know _what_ he is to you, but it’s too precious to put stipulations on. “I can’t ask you to—,”

“But you didn’t ask, _Klark_ ,” he so rarely says your name—usually _lukot_ , or _sis_ —and somehow it makes him seem older than his fifteen years—sixteen _winters_. “I offered. I won’t let you go alone—that’s—it’s not what we do.” _What we do_ ; he sighs, and then continues.

“Dax thought I would have felt obligated—that I wouldn’t have made my own choice to go—I was awestruck; I would have gone anywhere with him, with _heda_.”

He turns to look at you, the half-beard that he’s been trying to grow patchy and sparse along his jaw, lips pressed together in a grown up expression—but he has berry juice at the corner of his lip, and the peach fuzz across his lip is almost comical, and you can’t help smiling. He maintains for only a moment, before he’s smiling too—wide, with berry stained teeth.

“I’m choosing to go with you, _lukot_.” God, does he have to be so damned _sweet_ , all the time? You can tell from the look in his eyes he’s laying it on thick, breaking the tension easily while you groan.

“Save the smooth moves for one of these—frighteningly in shape women, I’m sure one of them would be thrilled to break you over their knee tonight.” His pathetic attempts at getting a girlfriend will be endless amusement for you.

“ _Lukot_ ,” he groans, rubbing a hand over his half-beard, and wiping his berry stained hands on his pants. “I have game, _sis_.” You will regret helping him with his English.

Rolling your eyes, you shove him half-heartedly, saying “Checkers, at best,”

He’s gleefully listing board games he’s never even laid eye on as you walk toward the medical tents, to make sure the healers are getting underway properly. There’s so much activity, but everyone seem to fall into order easily enough; there’s a rhythm, an ebb and flow of motion. The Ark always seems so artificial when you think of it now—there’s no _breath_ , no _life_. Not the same kind that lives here in the dry afternoon; with the sun long since dipped down below the trees, slipping away to a much colder night.

“Going the wrong way, sky girl,” a voice echoes, pinging off the tree trunks, and slipping into the coming dark. Blinking, you looking around only to find no one—that is until a branch shivers, and you look up. Royal perches above you, one brow cocked, and her smile a slash of white in the darkness. “Your tin can’s the other way.” A long, narrow finger is extended toward the west—where the Arkadia resides.

“It’s not my tin can,”

She snorts, “Well, it certainly isn’t mine.”

Hopping from the branch easily ten feet in the air should seem a little more dangerous than she seems to think—thoughtlessly dropping to land in a crouch in front of you, she stands—taller than you thought—her bow slung over her shoulder, the little malformed copper chips tied to the feathers at the top chittering in the dark.

“Death must be more of a push over than I thought,” she runs her tongue along the front of her teeth, making a sucking sound more for effect than anything. “If you’re its commander.”

You’ve been trying to ignore the title that’s followed you despite everything you’ve done— _wanheda_ tripping off tongues who have never laid eyes on you. And for the first time you want for that deference, because this lithe warrior looks down at you like she might a child, or an invalid.

“I’m sorry, I must have missed the part where I asked for your opinion.”

Royal laughs, a throaty sound as she pulls a single arrow from the quiver at her shoulder, spinning it adeptly across her knuckles before jabbing it in your direction. “ _Wanheda_ has bite.” Taking a few steps back, and gesturing with the arrow toward the west, “Suppose that’ll come in handy where we’re headed.”

“And where’s that?” There has been vague directions—west, the end of the world, beyond the clans.

Royal just smirks, eyebrow lifting cockily, “Hell, of course.”


	3. rumbles, like distant thunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scowling, Royal finishes her full body flop, lying flat on her back, fingers clasped behind her head. “I hate winter,” nostrils flaring, jaw stretching in a yawn. “I can only take it because I know spring’s coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three! A reveal or two in this chapter; it is a little shorter than usual, because I wrote it on a tablet, and because things start getting serious in the next chapter or two. Thanks for sticking around to read; enjoy! I woud be writing if it wasn't for you guys and your wonderful comments.

**unknown** **, _Flahkgedakru_  territory, Eastern United States, 99.04 AUS.**

Going anywhere with an army takes three times as long than if you were on foot. A thousand men and women with specific jobs, specific reasons—but even the most well-oiled machine can shudder to a halt. Just before sunset every night, they would break for camp. Tossing up tents almost mechanically, never pausing to break stride—you feel utterly useless. Your tent is the last to go up—even with Wash’s help, you’re always last. Some grounders would stop to ask—gruffly—if you needed help, and your pride was the only thing that made you decline every time. You don’t _need_ them—you were doing this for your people—you were searching for the girl who you— _something’d_ —because she seemed to be the only reasonable mind in the bunch.

The only one—okay, maybe one of the _few_ —who didn’t froth at the mouth as the idea of violence; of war. It isn’t until a week in that you return from filling your canteen from the river, that you find your tent already pitched—Moira sitting silently on the ground in front of it. He glanced at you and gave the closest thing to a shrug he seemed capable of.

You never mention it—though you offer him more of your stew most nights—he always shakes his head, always declines—but every night, your tent is ready for you. Something as simple as this from the towering jungle cat is enough to know that somehow you’ve endeared yourself to him—or maybe he’s only doing it for Wash.

You hope it is the former.

You’re just at the end of the trees, they thin out into what appears to be a barren meadow—grass browning, but still beautiful—swaying rows of golden grass. You’d heard someone mention that the army had moved beyond the _trigedakru_ territory, and knowing that makes you nervous.

This idea had been one things when you’d been closer to home—wherever that is you don’t know; the Ark, the dropship, or any of the half dozen places you’ve been at in the last three months—but now you’re leagues away, and still going further. Home nothing but a figment you have yet to settle on. It hurts your heart when green eyes flicker into your mind when you think— _home_ —because it isn’t _fair_ that she had this hold on you. Like a python wrapped around your throat; squeezing and squeezing until you couldn’t get any air—until the pressure caves in your ribcage.

The buzz of activity is more tonight, warriors chittering and gathering around a very deliberate ring of light. You’d only been able to catch a word or phrase in the quick _trigedasleng_ , but it’s enough that there’s going to be a show of some kind.

A play.

Royal slinks out from the dark opposite from where you sit. The woman—only a year or two older—is dressed in dark clothing, so far removed from her earthy green clothing. It blends her with the night, and not the dwindling trees around them. There’s a little cluster of people around her—all laughing, all shoving at each other. Ducking her head, a young boy— _too_ young for war—places something on her head.

Royal is true to her name—holding court like only a queen could, despite the ridiculous crown of twigs that has been set upon her head. She’s shed her outer coat, displaying much tanned skin, swooping and curling with black and pale blue ink. It curves over her shoulders and down her biceps, tucked back into the straps of black fabric that is tied around her torso. A much older warrior laughs as she jumps up upon a stone and looks down upon those gathered.

Her face is thrown into shadow, the light lashing the right side, and the muddy color of her eye is suddenly embers and fireworks—gold, and yellow, and red. Reflecting back all the things that the world presses into her skin—the things that people pick up over a lifetime, the burning things that can only last for so long inside, before the burn out those important places in your chest—leaving behind charred remains and ruined hearts.

She’s getting ready to tell some kind of story—one that her _whetkru_ brethren seem thrilled about, their hardened faces turning into wry smiles, and crinkled eyes. Wash sits beside you, hollowing out a quarter of a melon with just his front teeth. You’ve never seen him painted for war—never thought about it—but the dark kohl is slashed across both his eyes in a bar, from temple to temple. He keeps making faces that let you know he isn’t used to it—stretching his eyebrows upward, and opening his mouth to accommodate for the stiffness of his skin beneath the kohl.

“Do you know the story she’s going to be telling?” You ask, though your eyes don’t move from the life of the camp—this is different than marching to the mountain, than those who encircled Arkadia when asking for Finn’s life. There is no fear in them, no anticipation in their bones—these hardened men and women march toward promise of death with a smile and a sure step. You aren’t sure what to make of it.

“With this bunch? Probably about the rebellion,” he shrugs, taking another bite of melon, juice dribbling down his chin.

“Rebellion?”

Wiping the liquid away with his sleeve, he leans forward slightly, fruit forgotten in his lap as he looks toward the shuffling group. “ _Azgeda_ wasn’t the only clan to refuse the coalition; _whetkru_ was actually the only one to go into open rebellion against _heda_.” He glances past you, and you turn to look at Moira; the large man sits down on your opposite side, the crimson of his scarf wrapped more securely around his throat.

“And they’re _proud_ of that?” You’ll never understand—but maybe you do; that defiance that exists inside you, even if only slightly. That thing that emboldened the delinquents; that need to wrap failure around your shoulders like a shield, to wear it as armor.

“The war lasted a year; only one the commander almost lost.” He says it like children on the Ark spoke about the end of the world—the bombs, the destruction. Just something that happened, something that couldn’t be changed—some important event in the world that shaped so much, but was somehow— _other_. Removed and different.

You stop asking him questions because Royal has pulled her blade dramatically from her waist—a snap of her spine that seems more aggressive that her usual motions, her lips curling into a sneer—at some point while you’d turned to Wash, she’d dragged kohl across her face. It is messy, and haphazard; but you recognize the pattern. It smothers her eyelids in black, the three lines dragged down the hollow of her cheeks while she whips the blade in a half circle, before jabbing it harmlessly into the chest of a large man. The man is massive—broad across the shoulders, with muscles upon muscles—his face is serious, his dark eyes narrowed. A slightly lighter paste dragged over one of his eyes, a war hammer loosely held in his hand.

“Why am I here?” The man rumbles, like distant thunder.

“There is no more war,” Royal replies, lowering the blade to allow it to drag on the ground, turning her back on the man—on you—and all you see in the slow rise and fall of her lithe shoulders. “Your leaders have agreed to my terms.” There’s a different kind of regality to her now—like Lexa has truly stepped into her skin, like the commander resides in her bones, but when Royal turns around the somber severity of her face is wrong. No, not wrong.

Different.

“Those soft men did,” distant thunder is just the prelude to a storm, “I did not. My men haven’t either.” They’re facing each other now, Royal’s chin tipped up, but it doesn’t look like she’s conceding anything; arrogantly assured.

“Nothing good can come from this,” it is softer, but just as damning, and you know the promise in those quiet words. The way Royal’s body has moved closer, the way her arm tenses; the two warriors step around each other, a flare—surely—their weapons singing against each other before they dramatically part and turn away from each other. “Death isn’t the answer. Reconsider.” Looking into the dark, she says it without turning around, without flinching.

The man lowers his chin to his chest, his hands shifting their hold on the war hammer—eyes closing quietly, not answering immediately, and when he does. There’s something—different—something younger, something heart wrenching. “How many have you killed for peace, _Leksa_?” There’s an odd shiver to those gathered—most excited about the use of the commander’s given name, a privilege granted to so few. But they don’t look _surprised_ , this story is obviously a favorite.

The warrior continues, his eyes opening, and his weapon heaved onto his shoulder, huffing with the effort. “I’m just willing to kill a few more.” Finality lingers on him, and he remained—still as stone, until Royal replies, blinking fiercely into the torch light—her chest moving rhythmically.

“Very well.” Hoarse, exhaling—inhaling—exhaling—inhaling.

You see it as she walks into the dark; another man takes the narration over; slipping seamlessly between _trigedasleng_ and English, lining warriors up, to knock them down with a dramatic sweep of his hand. You can’t imagine the war—the deluges of rain, the humidity pressing down and smothering. He’s describing things you can’t even imagine, things that seem impossible.

Someone else is playing Lexa now—a small woman which daggers and blow darts, her face muddied and her dark eyes— _wrong_ , but it’s entertaining. More acrobatic that you imagine the true thing to be. Sword fights with spins and tossed weapons, more flare than substance—but it’s _amazing_. When you think of the grounders, you don’t think the arts—theater and dance. But as the graceful figures tangle together and break apart, you can’t imagine how you _hadn’t_ noticed.

When Royal appears from the dark near you there's something tired in her eyes, something dull and smooth, and it is so much more _genuine_ than the smiles and the laughter—it’s _true_ in ways you can’t touch, because those are her secrets to be told.

“I didn’t realize entertainment was part of being a hunter,” the comment is light.

Royal blinks, the paste dragged across her face makes the blue and green of her eyes illuminate, “Who said I was a hunter?”

“Wash—he said you were the king’s best hunter,” you’re trying to remember the word he’d used; one specific to the _whetkru_. “A _bahd_.”

She laughs, a surprised sound, and her cheeks stretch into that familiar smile—all white teeth and glee, “Oh, I am a _bahd_ , but that isn’t a hunter. I just happen to hunt.” Whatever churning pit of mirth that exists inside her has come back to life, has stolen the dullness from her eyes and replaced it with warmth. “A _bahd_ is a storyteller—a song weaver, or a poet.”

Somehow that makes so much more sense—despite the prowl of her step, and the weapons on her person. She has a flare for words, a charm that includes those around her to believing they had some intimate part of her.

“Did you always want to be a storyteller?”

She laughs again, but it’s softer, quieter—and you can’t _not_ see the lines down her cheeks, the smudge on her forehead that should be a golden cog. “Oh no,” she exhales, leaning on her sword, the tip dug into the ground, “I thought storytelling was for children and fools—my _bro_ on the other hand thought there was something noble in the trade.”

She continues, though she’s watching the performance going on in the torch light, following her fellow _bahds_ with bright eyes. “He’d come up with ridiculous stories, scribble them down on paper, make me and his little bird sit quiet while he recited them—heroes, and tyrants, and adventure. I grew out of it pretty quick,”

You know that distance in her eyes, the spaces between the blue and green, the empty spots waiting for something to fill them—or simple make it easier to forget they exist. You don’t realize your fingers are curling until you’re just brushing the hard leather of her wrist bracer; and you feel the faint tremble in her forearm. She watches you, eyes curious, before her wide grin returns, eyebrows perking upward with a coy expression before she tears the sword tip out of the ground.

“Time for the finale, sky girl.” She disappears back into the darkness, only to reappear in the center of the light. Sword sheathed at her side, arms loose at her sides. There’s a weight now, the hush falling over all those gathered—all eyes centered on the unfolding events. The large man from earlier is brought to his knees; strong men with crimson sashes around their chins hold him in place, and you can’t help how your eyes turn to Moira.

The _jusbrota_ is coiled tight, his hands clenched, his knuckles white—the dark blue of his eyes nearly black, and you’ve never seen him so— _effected_ —it is like he’s just realized the world exists around him, and he doesn’t like what’s happening. You must make some noise to gain his attention because his eyes flicker to you—quiet, appraising—before he turns back to the performance.

You wonder if he was there—if he had been one of the _jusbrotas_ to hold the _whetkru_ general on the ground, while Lexa passed his sentence. Can he remember it with clarity? Is this how it actually happened?

“Can we be the villains of our own story?” Royal asks, her hands void of weapons, standing close enough that her voice is low—quiet, like only the man before her should hear her. Her lips are pressed together, like this is a serious concern, and you see Lexa again—face spattered in blood, the mountain as her backdrop _I made this decision with my head, and not my heart_ echoing like a damnation in your mind. How many years ago had this war happened—how old was Lexa when she had to start making these choices?

When did she stop listening to her heart?

“Does that make me the hero?” The large man guffaws, before the two men holding him down twist his arm a little more—it is only half for show, you can see the legitimate strain on the joint. These warriors don’t joke around; not even with theater.

“Maybe it makes us both villains,” it’s a sad thought, without heart, without soul, “maybe there are no heroes.”

Royal finds you in the crowd—her eyes sparks and embers, her jaw clenched—there’s a murmur from those gathered, and you’re worried something has gone wrong, but she’s slipping back into character. She really has perfected Lexa’s lip curl—the sneer of white teeth, as she pulled her sword free. A chorus of _jus drein jus daun_ picking up before she even says the words, but soon enough she’s said them with authority—a statement, a final judgement.

And the man on his knees _smiles_ , looking up and there is a crinkle at the corner of his eye—you’ve stared too long, because things begin to shift so slightly out of focus, slanting, softening, and the only thing that pulls you back are the man’s next words. “The dead are gone _,"_ the sword stabs through him, obviously tucked under his arm as he stiffens—his faux death realistic and disturbing. “The living are hungry.”

It sounds like a warning, like some distant crack of lightening—promising a hurricane.

All the warriors gathered are chanting, thumping weapons against the ground, smacking each other in the back—there’s nothing quiet about a grounder war band. They want the night to know they are there—that they are coming. They are a thousand strong, and they have no fear of the dark.

But all the revelry is a distant thrum for you—because those words will haunt your dreams, because Lexa’s voice is the echo in your ear. You feel like you’re intruding on something she wouldn’t want you to know—something personal, something intimate—despite the fact that it is obviously a well know tale, if the jeers and hollers are anything to go by.

Royal has looped an arm around the big man’s shoulders, and she’s been lifted up easily, her frame dwarfed, but she’s laughing, and the kohl on her cheeks has smudged, and she’s not Lexa anymore—just as the man isn’t...whoever he was supposed to be.

Your mind and your heart battle, because _to hell_ with what Lexa would think—she deserves _nothing_ from you, but something deeper—something more _you_ , before the ground, before the hard choices—feels like you’ve gotten to know Lexa—not the _commander_ —better these last weeks than you ever had in her presence. You’ve found yourself in a collection of people who knew pieces to a story you hadn’t realized you’d wanted to know.

“What’d you think?” Wash asks, having finished his melon, the rind on the ground beside him; he’s watching you with excitement buzzing in his face, and you don’t see any of the sadness you feel inside.

“It’s sad.” You say, and his face cringes, like that hadn’t been the answer he expected.

“Sad?” Wash echoes, exhaling though his nose harshly, “How? The commander won.”

A tree boy not understanding how a victory could be sad—how sometimes winning feels worse than defeat, how choices, and decisions linger long after the blood has been washed away. He understood some of it, but he had too much hope in his eyes—something that lived despite the tragedies in his life.

Maybe that makes him stronger than you.

“Because, forest boy,” Royal drawls, leaning over you both, her weight balanced on the sword she’d used in the performance, “Sometimes winning is worse than losing, because you have to live with yourself after.” She’s smiling, like she’s just imparting some useless little fact to him in passing, but you know there’s something wounded and curling inside her. Something she keeps inside with smiles, and laughter, and all the surface things that no one knows to look behind.

Wash frowns, but he seems more bothered with the lesson than absorbing it, and you’re grateful for it—you don’t want him to know these things, not as well as you do. You want him to be better, to have a chance at something beyond this. So you smile—genuine, soft—and you shove his shoulder, scoffing a laugh as he bonelessly falls to his side, before getting to his feet, shuffling past you—past Royal—until he’s hitting Moira in the shoulder.

“Well, me and Moira are gonna go live with ourselves over near the food.” You know when he’s making a quick retreat, when he’s giving you space because you have yet to realize you want it. The _jusbrota_ doesn’t argue with him, lips parting just enough to allow a sigh, pointed teeth falling over his bottom lip as he drags himself to his feet silently. He looks at Royal for a moment, dark eyes appraising, and the _whetkru_ archer doesn’t back down.

She straightens, lips pinched, “Go on, blood kin, the boy’s hungry.” Lips curve, “I’ll keep the _skai prisa_ company.”

There’s a layer you don’t understand, just below Royal’s words—just beyond Moira’s stare, and you know is has something to do with the performance, with the kohl on Royal’s cheeks, and the woman she’d been pretending to be. But he turns, walking away without pause, like there wasn’t a whitening of his knuckles, wasn’t a clench to his jaw.

“Must you poke and prod everyone you speak to?”

Falling gracelessly to the ground beside you, she kicks at the dirt, digging out a little divet, “ _No_ ,” she intones, falling back to lean on her elbows, head tipped, dark hair falling in her eyes, “But it is fun.”

Rolling your eyes, “Moira isn’t someone to tease, he’s already in a bad mood.”

“He has good moods?” Royal snarks, now picking at little sprouts of grass.

“Of course,” the immediate response is out before you can come up with an example, “He—smiled the other day.” Granted, it was because Wash tripped and fell into a river, but—okay, bad example.

“Be still my heart, sky girl. You have changed my mind, I am a new woman.” Drier than dry, she looks upward now, toward the sky. “Was it cold up there?”

The change in subject is jarring, and you find yourself looking up—searching the stars, as if you could find the pieces of the Ark left in orbit.

“It was,” exhaling—inhaling, “But I didn’t know it at the time,”

She looks at you, like she doesn’t understand.

“It was all I knew; I didn’t know it could be warmer.”

Scowling, Royal finishes her full body flop, lying flat on her back, fingers clasped behind her head. “I hate winter,” nostrils flaring, jaw stretching in a yawn. “I can only take it because I know spring’s coming.”

Hope. You see it now, how it lingers like a phantom on her skin, some kind of mist that is easy to mist unless you know to look for it. But this woman lying on the ground, with Lexa’s stripes on her cheeks, seems less like the jovial archer that has flitted about the last weeks, and more like someone deeper—someone who feels things viscerally.

Turning her head to look at you, you can hardly make out her face, “What made it bearable for you?”

Your father. Wells. So many things that seem so far away now; impossible stupid things because the world is so much bigger now. So much harder.

“I thought of the ground.” Your solitary ward had been full of trees, and rivers, and large buildings—what you imagined the ground to be. Beautiful, and life altering—and it is, so very much it is, but you didn’t think it would hurt this badly. That it would ruin, and tear, and bleed you dry. Make you less human, and all the more so because of it.

“Was it worth it?” The million dollar question.

Swallowing, you mirror her, falling onto your back, fingers curled behind your head, looking up at the dark that had been your home for nearly eighteen years. You can almost zone out the revelry of the warriors around you, the torches, the scuffling bodies, the chants and hollers. There’s just black sky, with little twinkling dots filling so much of it—had the people on the ground been able to see the Ark?

Had they just been another star for the people who had remained on the ground?

“I’m not sure yet,” maybe, someday, you will be. “I’ll let you know when I am.”


	4. stay away from soft and tender things

**_Edge of the World_ , Mississippi Canyon, Middle United States, 99.04 AUS**

It isn’t until the bullets start flying that you wonder how you got here.

The days and night bleed into each other—sun and moon slipping to and fro, because there’s a monotonous rhythm of travelling with a destination in mind. _West_. It was ambiguous, and sure. You don’t think about it much, because if you do—you have to think about _why_ you’re going west, _who_ you’re hoping to find when you get there. You’ve somehow managed to push it to the back of your mind, and settled into something of a routine with Wash and Moira—and Royal when she decided to flit this far down the precession.

When night falls, the _jusbrotas_ sets up the small-ish sized tent Wash carries on his back, Wash goes hunting, and you collect all the things they forget. Firewood, fresh water, any medicinal plants nearby. You’ve gotten pretty sharp at starting a camp fire—can usually do it under five minutes—and your ear for running water is second to none. When the trikru scout returns with rabbits, or pheasants, you pluck—he skins—and settle for the night.

* * *

>   
>  “Passed through about five moons ago,” the story weaver says from her spot beside the fire, covered in drapes of animal fur, a gaggle of children at her feet. This was the first large village that the army had come across; their walls sturdy, and their population strong. “A _trikova gonakru;_ there wasn’t much talking. Camped in the woods.” You don’t know why the distinctions made, but it does seem strange that there wasn’t talking. The army you’ve settled in with bustles with noise—singing, chanting, and just general chatter.

* * *

Most nights you tell him about living in the sky—about how it was cold, and lonely, but you didn’t realize that. About how you had friends, and family—and you took it for granted. But some nights, there are no lessons you try to impart, because you can remember sitting snugly against Wells at the age of eight, looking down at the Earth below and fabricating whole lives for the people you imagined there. Stories of dragons, and knights, and heroes—and sometimes you forgot to make villains, because you were young, and it didn’t always occur to you that people weren’t inherently _good_. Those stories would be about family farms, and adventurous siblings—looking for gold, or trying to win contests.

And on the nights you don’t want to talk—Wash tells you about Sonian. His eyes go glassy and wet the first few times, and you try to tell him he doesn’t have to—but he wants to. Because he wants you to know his sister, like you’ve allowed him to know Wells and your father. He tells you about how she accidentally knocked his front tooth out many seasons ago—he’d been tickling her, and she’d lashed her head backwards accidentally, right into his mouth. It had bled—and bled—and bled—and when it had stopped, she’s kissed his forehead and told him to make a wish. Because baby teeth had powers—didn’t he know?

He confesses at the end of the night he _didn’t_ know—it had been something their mother had told her before she died.

He confesses he misses his mother too—afraid to seem less a man.

* * *

 

>  The picture becomes more distinct the more villages you pass—of a caravan that shows up with no regard, and pillages their land. Stealing their people, and making off with them toward the edge of civilization—at least, the grounder’s idea of it. The fear is palpable, but it is numbing—because they _believe_ , so much, in Lexa. That she’ll march into hell, and grab the devil by the horns; they spit on any mention of her death, and you find yourself—deep down—believe it too.
> 
> “ _Heda_ said she’d return,” a little boy say outside his father’s weapon forge. Chewing ideally on a piece of wheat; his English choppy, but clear—eyes bright, even though both his older brother and mother were taken by the _pikas_ two winters past. “Said she’d keep an eye out for my _bro_ and _nomon_.”

* * *

The trees have long since vanished—leaving crooked sun dried things in their wake, their leaves long and harshly serrated at the edges. It doesn’t rain anymore, and the dirt slowly turns to sand—you’re entering _drisankru_ territory, one of the grounders mutters, clutching his weapon tighter. Many of those who surround you aren’t the same ones that had left Ton DC, those warriors stopped at villages along the way—trading places so that locals could keep going in their stead. Royal lets you know it is because it is smarter to have those who know the land to keep their flanks.

“And they owe _heda_ something fierce for her campaign,” she says while walking away.

You learn a little of what had lured the commander this far west—invaders and missing villagers, demolished villages and bone deep fear. The magnate of the _drisankru_ had plead his case, and Lexa had not found him wanting—she’d taken her strongest west, and never returned. But neither had the invaders.

Except those who never left.

* * *

 

>  The ground is churned and mottled where a thousand feet had walked—no formation, no order. Just a thousand footprints, as the only reminder that something had happened here. There are a few forgotten weapons, blades and daggers, and metal collars broken and left to the sands. A _drisan_ scout stands uneasily as Royal asks him what happened—his bony shoulders lift and one hand spreads. “The _pikas_ weren’t expecting an army,” he says with no real passion.
> 
> “ _Heda_ defeated them?” She asks.
> 
> He nods, “Easily.” But then his lips purse, “But there’s more at the edge of the world. _Heda_ was hunting for them, not some _ripa_ hoard. She wanted the lot of them.”

* * *

The army had split around a ridge in the desert, and piled high dune that had started out as a much smaller rock—only two or three hundred strong, it really was a forward scouting force, much of the army a day behind, trudging through what was a quagmire of sucking sand. Royal had decided to keep going—only a day or two further, and then they’d make camp—but there’d been fire in the distance.

Fire, and screaming.

“If the invaders have even _half_ the forces they’ve had in the past,” Royal warns, looking at the far silhouettes of a village just before the edge of the world—the large canyon that drops drastically down a mile further. “We’ll stand no chance.”

“So you’re going to just let those people _die_?” Because you can’t stomach anymore death—not if it can be helped—and your insides are already churning violently. Royal frowns, and the harsh lines don’t sit well on her face; they make her mouth small, and her eyes narrow. Her hand curls around the strap for her quiver, unblinking and serious—and you think how strange it is to see Royal serious.

“What do you suggest, sky girl? We risk our numbers, for an already doomed village at the edge of the world?”

“Didn’t we come all this way to help?”

“No, we came all this way to find your commander.” She does that sometimes— _your_ , instead of _my_ , or _our_ —she’s usually talking to Wash, or Moira, or some other _Trikru_ warrior, but it feels different when she says it to you. Because—well, because Lexa isn’t _anything_ to you. Except some kind of distant _maybe_. She’s a whisper at night, and a forgotten dream in the morning, and you’d come to accept that, in some kind of awful untouched way.

Clenching your jaw, you round your shoulders, and turn to Wash, who is watching you with oddly quiet eyes under dark smudges of war paint—his jaw in clenched, and you can only assume he’s thinking of Ton DC. Burning, a lost cause—and you nod. Because you can’t sit quietly and allow this—you can’t watch from some distance as people’s _lives_ are smudged away like they aren’t people.

“You may be general,” you feel like you’re living a memory, like you’re standing in front of your mother once more. Looking at her with conviction and a weight she won’t understand—except now that weight is five hundred dead bodies heavier, “But I’m in charge.”

Indra had said so; she’d dragged you back into this nightmare, and asked you to lead.

For your people—and hers.

For Lexa.

* * *

 

> The warrior stands firm in the shoulders, his face marked harshly by man-made weapon and weather alike—the skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes, his frown certain. “ _Heda_ turned us toward the forest; gave us messages, and ordered us to guard the tree line.” The story had been the same from many of the _trikru_ warriors—some even from the mountain’s belly—the commander had turned them back east, while she marched over the lip at the edge of the world, into the cavern and beyond. No one who stayed knew what happened beyond that—no one had seen her since.

* * *

 

Wash returns with Moira—the hulking shadow of crimson cloth and tri-marked cheeks—and with him is the remainder of the trikru warriors, who would fallow the commander’s blood kin to hell and back. Everything always starts small—you’ve learned that—a few at a time, and just as the sun begins its downward trek, you go forward. Hand gripped tight around a gun carrying a single bullet—a foaming at the mouth army at your back.

It isn’t until the bullets start flying that you wonder how you got here.

You don’t want to agree with anything that you’ve learned from _her_ —plans don't last long in battle—but too much of it makes sense when you’re pressed against the side of a crumbling shack, the smell of smoke heavy in your nostrils, the taste of ash upon your tongue. There’s a long dagger in your hands—clutched tightly—the blade slick with crimson, that you can’t remember causing. You’d learned the basics from Wash—and then Moira—but it had never seemed your primary skill set.

You were a healer.

You don’t know how long the battle has been going on—the cacophony of gunshots and screams—the whirr of blades through smoke and air, and arrow taking flight. Soldiers are pushing in on all sides, but they funnel down and away—retreating toward the edge of the world.

Too much happens. It feel like the blink of an eye.

It all goes wrong.

* * *

A rock digs into your knee, and the ache in your head makes thoughts rattle and click—like locks that won’t properly engage. Air locks, and prison locks, and door locks—so many locks. The sun is going quiet in the distance, at the edge of the desert—where the mountains grin, like broken junkyard teeth.

“I’m going to ask one last time—polite like,” the soldier says, his boots shifting unsteadily through the sand, his weight sitting all wrong on the balls of his feet. “Who is in charge?”

His eyes are sun-mad under the rim of his helmet, bright and feverish, and you see where sweat is sliding down the line of his jaw—some men can’t handle the desert. It saps them of humanity, and sours the parts of their soul that can be salvaged. This man—in particular—relishes in his madness, you can see that from how his tongue flicks across his upper lip at the idea of violence.

“Not sure what I expected from savages,” he croons, and two of his fellow soldiers chuckle, “maybe I need to speak a language you understand.” He barely shifts his head, and someone is being pulled from the line of kneeling prisoners. They are thrust forward—nearly stumbling to the ground—and a gun muzzle it wedged up under their chin.

“I speak violence pretty fluently, barbarian.” The colonel mock whispers to his captive—Wash’s face looks impossibly young under his war paint. “But, maybe you can help translate.” His finger curls around the trigger.

A gun goes off.

Everyone moves. A restless beast with more heads and arms than can be coordinated—the crack of gunfire through the air like quick punches to the chest. _Pop, pop_. They echo and shake, and when you’ve yanked yourself to your feet you see the bodies—fresh ones, leaking crimson, their faces frozen in shock, their mouths open and silent. It churns something in your stomach—no one is acting rationally, the sound spilling in from all sides around you.

A soldier had spooked—you know that much—they’d seen the shiver in some _barbarian’s_ muscles, and had put them down—and the grounders—well, the grounders don’t take kindly to guns. They reared up like a savage wave of lean muscle and bared teeth—accepting their losses as they flow through the soldier’s rank again. With no weapons but their fists.

You can almost feel the shake of the ground every time a body falls limp and lifeless.

You’re looking for the colonel, looking for Royal—anyone who could curb this madness.

You find her first.

She’s blood splashed and grinning, her teeth red, and the pour of blood over her chin makes you believe it isn’t _hers_.

Your stomach churns again.

She’s slamming half curled fists into the soft spots around armor; sides, and necks, and thighs. You hear the distinct sound of a femur snapping when her foot slams down with vicious precision. You’re at her side as she’s about to lift an oddly shaped rock and cave in the helmet of a soldier—your hand touches her back, and you’re about to speak when she whirls around and snags you by the throat.

Her fingers are hot—slicked with fresh blood—and her blue-green eyes are wild, her pupils pin-pricks of black in the muddy sea of her irises. And it takes her a moment to recognize you—to loosen her fingers, and smooth out her face. But you can still feel the phantom touch of her hands around your neck—threatening to end everything, the black edging in at the corner of your vision.

“We need to stop this,” you wheeze, her grip not gone completely.

She grins, “Oh, I’m not going to stop until I’ve carved them through.”

You implore her—because she’s _reasonable_ , and that’s more important now than anything else. “If you keep going like this,” you implore, “everyone will die. They have you out-numbered and surrounded.” This was only their forward unit, you’d heard the radio transmission—a retreat of two whole battalions—this was their unit farthest east, but that matters little.

“We’ll take as many of them as possible to the afterlife,” she assures, and her hands still haven’t fallen, and it’s strange to feel a stillness surround you—it digs into your bones, and keeps you present. People are dying only feet to your left and right—uniforms and war paint splashed crimson with blood, and left lifeless on the ground.

“Royal,” you murmur, stepping closer, and she’s warm, and solid, and her hands have shifted to grip your shoulders through leather. “This isn’t how we’re supposed to die. This isn’t where it ends.” No, the end is somewhere else—how you know, you can’t say, but you feel it.

Like the middle of a novel—there’s a few chapters left to go, no matter how bleak the circumstances.

“Who says we’ll die, sky girl?” She’s a savage, it sits in the curve of her smile and the sharpness of her teeth, “Counting us out already?”

“No, that isn’t it.” You _need_ her to listen, to see beyond pride, and proof, and to trust that all you want—all you’ve _ever_ wanted—is to save your people. And that now includes her—and Wash. “ _Think_ , Royal.”

You can’t tell her, she has to decide for herself—and you trust her.

In this much, at least.

You see the thoughts flicker across her eyes, cooling them until the blaze of war has simmered and wafted away. Her face turns flat lipped and narrowed at the eyes, and she turns harshly on a heel—one hand removed from your shoulders instantly, the other lingering as she reaches for the horn at her belt.

A soldier swings a rifle in her direction, and she lifts a foot to hit him in the sternum—making him topple over and then she’s slamming her heel into his dazed face. A busted nose, a broken jaw, a ruined ocular ridge—but he’s alive, and with her foot pressing against his chest, she lifts the horn to her mouth—a blows.

The chaos drags violently to a stop, half the combatants snapping to look in her direction—and it will never cease to amaze you the dedicated loyalty of the grounders. You’d seen it when Lexa had walked away at the mountain—how warriors stopped, and some took bullets in their determination to heed their commander. And Royal isn’t that, but she is their lynchpin—their corner stone—and when she shouts, “ _Nou_!”, they listen.

Royal embodies her name—bloody hands lifted slightly, long stained fingers wiggling mockingly while a corporal shoves her shoulder, and forces her back onto her knees. Her chin it up, eyes hard, even when a rifle stock hits her cheek and her face whips around—you see the slithering glint in her eye that curls her face into a snarl, before it smooths out, and she looks at the corporal.

“I’m in charge.” Three words that sound like a death sentence, but she says them evenly—with a soothing purr of confidence.

“Well, miss _in-charge_ ,” the colonel drawls, tucking a gloved knuckle beneath Royal’s chin, and then grasping it between two fingers. She growls, and you wait for her to try snagging his hand between her sharp teeth. “What’s stopping me from putting you down like a sick dog?”

“Compassion and mercy?” Royal coos, nostrils flaring, she doesn’t pry her chin away, but you see how her eyes flicker across the grounders who’ve all be set to their knees again—there’s a good handful left, more yet that had stayed behind the lip of the canyon, and you wonder if they can see what’s happening from their seat at the top of the world. “Or maybe common-fucking-sense?”

You see how tanned skin turns white with his tightening grip, “Listen bitch, you don’t ge—,”

“Colonel!” You bark, stumbling to your feet, and when a hand settles between your shoulders you tense, waiting to be shoved back down—but the colonel has a hand raised, staying the violence, and you feel confidence enter your heart. You’ve been making deals with devils since your boots his the ground. “Do you know who I am?”

His chin tips, “No. Should I, little girl?”

 _Little girl_. Maybe you take for granted the reputation that drapes over your shoulders like a shawl of death; dark, and cold, and rotting. Because this fresh faced man of war has no idea what you’re capable of—what you’ve _done_.

“Have you heard of Mount Weather?” You ask, because he’s looking at you curiously now, interest in his sun-mad eyes.

“I have; we catch their radios every now and again. The short frequencies.”

You swallow, stepping forward, squaring your shoulders even with your hands still in the air, “Heard anything from them recently?”

 _Now_ , you have his attention, cold and full and you want to give it back—because the calculation in his gaze is leagues worse that the brutality that lingers in the grounders, even the worst of them. The colonel looks at you like you are a piece to some puzzle he’s _dying_ to solve.

“Past three months, or so,” you continue, “I imagine it’s been pretty quiet on their end.”

He releases Royal’s jaw, and he steps around Moira who you just notice—his shoulder bloody, and his arm limp—he had obviously caught a bullet. The officer is now in front of you, and he is at _least_ half a foot taller than you, his chin tipped down to meet your eyes—heat pours off his skin, like he’s amidst a fever. “I find myself mighty interested in what you’re implying, little girl.” He whispers, and even you have to strain to hear him—it’s a dark murmur, dangerous and soft. “Because you _are_ implying something; are you not?”

“No implications, just facts.” You lift your chin, and lower your hands—he doesn’t flinch, arrogance slanted across his shoulders like armor. “Everyone’s dead in the mountain.”

“And you know this how?”

There’s a million choices a person can make in life; each one a little split in the road. Yes, or no. Right, or wrong. Life, or death. A million-billion little possibilities, and this is just one of them. Licking your upper lip, you imagine this won’t be your last hard choice—or, maybe it will be. Maybe none of this will pan out and you’ll die in a glorified hole in the ground. The sun burns the crown of your head, it beads sweat along your temples and collarbones, and down the line of your spine. You feel less human than you had an hour ago, and the epiphany is startling because you hadn’t realized when you started thinking of yourself as human again. Hadn’t realized how healing those months had been; how you’d begun to realize just how deadly your edges were, and how to stay away from soft and tender things.

“I know,” you say slowly, “because I killed them all.”

Silence.

He doesn’t move, his beady eyes considering you, weighing your merit, and worth. You see how his fingers loosen and re-grip the grip of his rifle, where it is slung across his shoulder. His eyes are dark—not brown, maybe a gray of some kind. Something cold and wrong—a color without color. His lips don’t so much as twitch as he leans forward, and you can feel the fetid breath on the blades of your cheeks.

“You’re telling the truth,” he deduces, and his tone has drifted off on the wind—light and amused, and you want to know what is _amusing_ about genocide. “Well I’ll be.” He says, and doesn’t elaborate as he leans away, watching you still, before turning on his heel and making a motion with his hand.

The soldiers pivot with him, and start toward the far lip of the canyon—their rifles held at attention, and the people left behind to tend to the prisoners are the silent warriors in bronze and leather. You’d caught glimpses of them in the fighting—and unlike the military, they did not wield guns. They had swords, and spears, and knives—some only their bare hands—and now, they’re shoving grounders hard, urging them to their feet, so that they would follow in the soldier’s wake.

A warrior around your height curls fingers into your jacket, and drags you up, a sharp blade edged under your chin, and you’re left staring into a helmet carved like a bird of some type. The beak sharp, the feathers intricate and carefully crafted. Where eyes are meant to be, there is only darkness—no humanity in this bronze avian. The sharp circlet of copper around her neck is brash against the golden snap of collarbones. She hesitates before wrapping rope around your wrists, and tying them tight.

“You’re not one of them,” you say, like she needs some kind of reminder, and it only makes her tie them tighter, before turning you forcefully and shoving your forward.

“Not a cheerful lot, are they?” Royal asks when she saddles up beside you, stripped of armor and with a busted nose. She’d obviously tried to struggle, and had been put down for her effort—fighting with her arms tied behind her back probably didn’t help. You can only lift your shoulders in a shrug, while a lead is looped through the bindings around your wrists. This isn’t the first time you’ve been captured, and in all honesty, it probably won’t be your last.

“You’re taking this rather well,” she says conversationally, giving token struggles up after a few moments, obviously conserving her energy.

“If I panicked every time someone tied me up,” you say, “I’d be stark-raving mad by now.”

You regret saying it as soon as the words are out of your mouth—her eyebrow wiggles slightly, and her split lip is pulling into a grin that _must_ hurt, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe it is madness, the fluttering in your chest that is laughter—because this is _ridiculous_. Utterly ridiculous. You’re at the bottom of the Mississippi river, you’re tied up, and this _idiot_ is making you laugh.

“Stop it,” you say quietly.

She just grins wider, “Stop what, I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to, your face is—just _stop_.”

“My face is what?” She hums at the back of her throat, and one of the animal masked warrior chances a glance in your direction, you can almost _feel_ the judgement. “Charming? Beautiful? Glorious?”

Shaking your head, you don’t respond, because you know there really isn’t any point. Once Royal dug her heels in, there was really no budging her. It was interesting to watch how the grounders paired off, tucking close at the edges, circling those of influence; not in any discernable manner, but it was there. Moira wasn’t too far away, a sling keeping his shoulder stationary, a collar around his neck.

Wash was just a little further, being shoved forward by a broad shouldered man in a hawk helm. They remind you of gladiators—their arms and legs wrapped, their helmets scuffed and harsh. Men and woman carved for combat. They’re all armed, but it’s with rudimentary weapons—not even the oiled blades that the grounders favor. They’re cleaved stone, and hastily formed iron; held in silent hands and hoisted against leather covered shoulders.

The battalion is thrice as large as the force that sacked your camp, obviously having regrouped at some point; you try to spot differences in their uniform, but the only thing that seems to change is the patches on their shoulders, and the chevrons on their arms. The colonel cuts a striking figure against the flood lights that shatter the dark—there’s something fitfully _artificial_ about the lights. Maybe because there isn’t much technology besides them—guns, and vehicles, and flood lights.

They’re sitting at the bottom of a worn path—a dangerously curved slope that works its way up the side of the canyon—its high, even if the precession had moved slightly north, to a lower canyon lip, but that only make _so much_ of a difference.

“I don’t recognize the markings,” Roya whispered, having gone quiet and observant, you look at her, and her muddy eyes are bright in the dark. Snatching light from the air, and stashing it away in the blue, “From what I’ve seen; none of the _ron cron_ are from the twelve clans.” You should have thought of that too, but you can’t discern what belongs where.

“ _Ron cron_?” You ask.

She grins, “Metal heads.”

Rolling your eyes, your wrists are tugged and you’re separated from the rest, your ankles ache from the uneven ground, tripping through sink holes and dead vegetation. The colonel is lighting a cigarette, and you bite back the comment about how she shouldn’t even worry—he’s killing himself.

“So, little girl,” he intones, clearly aware of how the moniker names you bristle, it’s in the curl of his lip, and the delicate _tap-tap_ of his finger against the cigarette. “Since you’re such a _big deal_ on the savage side of the Mississippi, I’m going to lay things out nice and pretty—simple like. You cooperate, you live. You become a bother—any kind a’tall—and you die. In manners most unpleasant.”

He exhales a long trail of smoke, it shivers in the air and you can’t help following it with your eyes. “Now this applies to all your lost boys and girls, Peter Pan. This is not Neverland.” He seems delighted with his carefully spun threat, it’s in how his eyebrows raise and his eyes widen just a hair beyond narrowed, “Do we have an understanding?”

“And what exactly happens,” you begin, lips chapped and pressing together, “If we cooperate.”

“Why,” he grins, positively _joyful_ with his coming answer, “you go to auction, of course.”


	5. well, merry reckoning, clarke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re too young to be this jaded,” he says, glancing over his shoulder momentarily before returning to his work.
> 
> Sighing, you flip through the pages like something of import will jump out at you. “You’re too old to be this naïve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! It's been almost a year and I'm not even sure who is still around to read this, but I've gotten a fair amount of continued in interest in this story. I apologize for the wait; there were reasons—there always are—but the biggest one was I just lost my hand for this story. For this world both borrowed and created. Recently I had a chance to go back and read some of the chapters of torn down because of comments that reminded me it even existed—and it sucked me back in. Updates will happen more frequently now, I promise, I already have the next two chapters half written, which is an accomplishment for someone who usually does them as they’re posted.
> 
> This chapter is going to have a lot of things introduced—ideas, and people, and all sorts of moving pieces. I hope I did it some kind of justice to how it panned out in my head. Clarke’s grown, and adapted to a lot in her time on the ground; everything west of the Mississippi won’t be any easier. Also, I changed the commander of the Mississippi Canyon expedition to a Colonel; it felt blasphemous to write "the commander" for anyone except Lexa.
> 
> But only an idiot would count Clarke Griffin out.

**_Edge of the World_ , Mississippi Canyon, Middle United States, 99.04 AUS**

The Colonel led the battalion with a brutality that had been unnerving—it was the sun-slick madness in his eyes and the curved blade of a grin that seemed perpetually slashed across his angular face. He’d been amiable in the way psychopaths on 21st Century television were—chatty and charming, until he was anything but. He’d kept you close, which usually meant having some lower ranked soldier tugging you along by your wrists—enjoying whatever power he took from the action.

Which seemed to be a lot.

“You know what, mountain killer?” He’d said when they were cresting the far side of what used to be the Mississippi River; leaning all his weight against a large flat rock, his rifle slung carelessly across his chest. “I’m beginning to see it.” He’d continued, watching as the grounders from your group walked past—they were dirty and haggard, a few had even fallen during the walk—fallen, and then been killed where they landed. Two bullets to the chest—soldiers watching them die slowly with the apathy afforded to people who couldn’t quite feel what they were meant to.

“See what?” You’d muttered at his side, tethered there by the rope around your wrist, and the hot muzzle of a corporal’s rifle—the edge pressing hard into your lower back. Your shadow was a six foot tall man in a worn uniform—his cap always slung low to his eyes unlike most of the soldiers that strolled past—no helmet, no gloves—it showed the scarred fists curled around the matte black of his rifle.

“Why, what makes you so dangerous, of course.” The words slanted as he flicked his cigarette, ashes falling to the dust beneath his well-worn boots. He looked at you with such gray empty eyes that you wondered if they’d ever had anything there. Before the sun-hot madness and casual cruelty. “They look at you differently. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

It was true. Even those who knew nothing about the three-hundred grounders you’d burned alive, or knew exactly what had happened at the Mountain—they watched you with trepidation, with a kind of curious fear. In the larger grounders it was so easy to miss—the extra inch or two of distance, the way they just watched. You were different, you were dangerous—in ways that had nothing to do with spear tips and sword edges. Some still called you _tumbla natbri_ —falling star, like it was a warning. The star that crashed right out of the sky, through the clouds and shattered itself against the mountain.

You supposed it was better than _wanheda_.

The Colonel had just been tickled by his little observations, taking the time every so often to shoving you toward groups of young grounders just to watch them scatter. He’d vanish for long lengths of time and you’d wonder what he was doing—who he was tormenting, or killing, or worse. You never knew exactly what the _worse_ could have been, but you had no doubt that there was one. After all, the whole lot of you were being carted off to auction.

You hadn’t seen Royal for days, and you’d begun to assume the worst—that the Colonel had simply thought her too much trouble and had put her down. But you knew he would have made a show of it—paraded her dead body up and down the lines of grounders as some reminder of his power. Relief poured through you when you’d seen her with a soldier at either shoulder—her face a little bloodied, and her grin a little swollen from a split lip, but it hadn’t slowed her any. If anything, when she’d spotted you she winked—the damned idiot that she was—while blowing you a kiss.

The nights were the worst—the clink and shuffle of bodies trying to get closer together, trying to gather their heat. You’d stayed away—kept much closer to the officer tents than most—and the only one who seemed able to get around as he wished was Wash. The _trikova_ skirted the edges of groups and the darkest shadows until he was falling into your side and tucking low enough that passing foot soldiers didn’t see him.

“Is there any way you could not give me a heart attack?” You ask while watching the bobbing end of a lit cigarette from where it lingers at the edge of the camp. Far enough away that you’re not too worried.

“Moira was being so—overbearing.” He grouses, slipping through the tight binging around his wrist with such little effort—like he’d done it a hundred times before—just so that he could cross his arms over his chest.

“Moira doesn’t talk.”

“ _Sha_ , but you know that look he has—that _you’re doing it wrong_ look.” As much as you didn’t want to agree with him, you did know the look. You want to ask him why he had to come all the way over here to tell you that, but another soldier stops just beside you and looks down. He watches Wash much longer than he did you—trying to put some danger level to him. Of course, the tree boy curls in on himself and grins brightly, cheeks puffing slightly—making him seem younger.

“Were you doing something wrong?”

Wash scowls, “Well, _sha_ , but he didn’t have to point it out.”

The soldier scoffs and turns to walk away and you realize he’d been listening to your conversation—and all he’d heard was an annoyed boy tired of being chaperoned. Nothing worth mentioning to the Colonel. Wash watches the man walk off, a focused intensity about him as he finally turns back to you. The last two weeks have aged him whole years—he looks older, and it has nothing to do with the patchy beard he still can’t grow in, or the wide set to his eyes.

It’s something you’d noticed in the delinquents too—how they carved the youth away so quickly. Of course, they’d done it in all the wrong ways. Power struggles and rebellion.

“The _pikas_ have the whole camp surrounded, active watch every few lengths or so. The Colonel doesn’t seem to sleep much at all,” he says quickly and quietly, ducking closer to your ear, keeps his eyes turned out. You had noticed how little the Colonel stayed stationary—it was a manic shiver in his fingers and the brightness to his eyes. A restless lethargy to him that compounded and compounded until he was uncontrolled impulses.

“Moira and Royal?” Just as low, licking the cracked dryness of your lips.

“Royal’s going to get herself brained—the _branwada_.” Wash is scoffing, you can’t see his eyes in the dark, but there’s a particular tilt to his chin when he’s glaring. “Moira has kept all _trikru_ and _whetkru_ together. They aren’t in-fighting—for once.” Its good news, even if you have no idea what to do about the current situation—there’s too many soldiers, too many rifles. Too much of a chance that every grounder here will be put down like animals of they so much as tried to escape.

“Three more days and we’ll be at their compound.” You say, watching absently as a group of soldiers cuts through the middle of the camp—they’re young and laughing, not much older than you. And you wonder if they see anything wrong with this. You watch how they carelessly laugh through the silence—the dark folding in at every edge. That is, until a little amber of red tumbles to the ground at your feet.

“Two if we’re lucky, mountain killer.” The Colonel grins down at you when you whip your head up to find him—he’s leaning on the handle of one of the large mallets used to erect the tents just before dark. “Can’t keep the good folks of the Republic waiting, can I?”

“You’re such a good guy,” you quip.

Grinning, he leans the mallet against the tent behind you and goes to a crouch so he can look at you eye to eye. There’s something sedate about him, and you wonder if it has anything to do with the pills he takes on a pretty regular basis. No one else seems to pay it any attention when he throws two back with morning coffee, or another few with dinner.

“I am,” he agrees after a lingering silence you’re afraid to break. “See, miss big deal, things go mighty smooth on our side of the canyon—there’s an order, and as long as you stay inside your lane, there’s no problems to be had. A place for everything, and everything in their place.” He doesn’t _glance_ at Wash, doesn’t pay any mind to the grounders going quiet around him—there’s a set kind of confidence to him, bordering on arrogance. “Do you know what happens to problems?”

Your teeth creak from how hard you’re pressing them together, “Let me guess—they die?”

He grins, “Oh, they wish they died.”

It is the assured lilt to his words that draws the cold line down your back—it’s the even look in his mad eyes that stays with you all that night. This isn’t the clinical depravity of the mountain, it isn’t the traditional savagery of the grounders—it’s some bastard hybrid of them both. You’re nothing more than chattel to him, to the soldiers laughing at the edges of the camp—they look _through_ you, not at you.

Everything inside you wants to rebel, wants to buck this weight on your shoulders, but so much inside is saying _not now_ , it’s in your bones and in your blood. The Colonel’s right—just under two days later you’re walking up the first hill after almost a week of perfectly flat desert. Your calves burn and your lungs protest—but you stop breathing when you see it.

The gates.

Massive illuminated things humming with electricity. Torches lining the outside, but they’re nothing in comparison to the wrought iron doors grinding open. Large enough to fit ten grown men through at once—shoulder to shoulder—and easily twenty feet tall. The wall goes off far enough that it disappears into the dark—only interspersed flickers of torch light let you know it’s still there somewhere in the darkness.

“They’re going to be sold off one by one, mountain killer.” The Colonel whispers when you cross under the arch of the gate. He’s at your elbow, his smile broken with the cigarette in his mouth. “But you? You’re going to go to someone special.” He laughs to himself at whatever joke he’s making. He must feel how your muscles tense under his grip, but he just laughs louder—a bark of a sound. A twist of cruelty punctuating weeks of uncertainty.

* * *

**Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.08 AUS**

Time is different when you don’t have a specific moment in mind—just an open ended _maybe_ , and a very tentative _hopefully_. The Madison Republic seemed to thrive on the open ended-ness of it all—some far off future that wasn’t touched by the present. Every member of the settlement seemed wistfully aware of something they weren’t willing to embellish on—even four months later you still had only been able to scratch the surface of what exactly was going on. They shift and move with the kind of coordination that seems positively ridiculous if it wasn’t being witnessed.

“He dies at the end,” you say from where you’re sitting in the slanted light of the window—the classroom had hit the boiling point at noon, but you hadn’t been able to convince yourself to move out of the sun.

“No,” the man with his back to you says, writing copious questions on the board—the chalk was brand new, you’d gotten it from the supple shed at the beginning of the day. “It’s a happy ending—they find what they’re looking for. They find Elsewhere.” You watch him sigh and erase something with the side of his fist instead of using the eraser that sits on the bottom of the chalk board. “It’s about hope.” He sounds wistful, and you think it’s a strange look in a man his age—over thirty, definitely, though probably not terribly close to forty.

“Hope’s an illusion,” you say, looking down at the book in your hands—you’d been able to see their printing press only once. The large antiquated machine something they had salvaged from one of the largest cities—it ran every second Sunday of the month from dawn until dusk, eating up all available power for the daylight hours. The man who worked the machine could recall whole novels from memory—“A parlor trick, really. Just don’t go telling anyone.” He recreated classic novels letter by letter until they were finished—he was what the younger generation called _moles_. One of the people who had been alive in the Fort Leavenworth bunker seventy years ago—before they cracked the seal and ventured onto the ground for the first time. The people who still squinted at the sun like it wasn’t an assured thing.

“They take the sun for granted,” the old printer had groused while you waited at his side for the box of novels you were supposed to take from him. “Don’t appreciate what the dark can do to a person.” He’d stopped, like he was considering something before looking at you. “But you get.” And that—as they say—had been that. You’d taken the box, and returned to your assigned post. Shaking your head, you return to the present and see that your companion has moved onto what seems to be an outline. A flow chart of events.

“You’re too young to be this jaded,” he says, glancing over his shoulder momentarily before returning to his work.

Sighing, you flip through the pages like something of import will jump out at you. “You’re too old to be this naïve.”

Peter just smiles at you, a bright expression that reaches all the way up to his eyes—he’s the kind of man you don’t understand in this twisted landscape of a civilization. He’s kind, and thoughtful, and _funny_ —but he doesn’t even question the collared wastelanders that bring in materials and messages for him. He thanks them, offers them something to drink if it’s particularly hot out—but other than that, he bids them goodbye to whatever fresh hell awaits.

“It’s too coincidental.” You continue—you’ve only just read the book, devouring the story faster than you had the last two mandatory reading assignment. You’re holding Peter’s vintage novel—the one printed in 2011. The corners were ruined, and the cover falling off—but the man treasured it like it was his only child. You’d been surprised when he lent to do you without hesitation.

“They escape and just _happened_ to find the house from his memories?” You wished you could believe Jonas lived—that the world wasn’t a terrible place that chewed people up and spit them out. “He’s dying and he’s thinking about what _could_ be out there.” The false hope of a dying boy—someone who saw colors from the first time, remembered bombs falling, and felt people falling in love for the first and last time.

“Or maybe,” Peter returned happily, “his memories are guiding him to where he wants to be. Maybe he had memories of that house for a _reason_.” The ambiguousness of the ending doesn’t sit well with you—the _maybe_ , or _maybe_ _not_ of it all. Concrete endings are what you strive for—that inevitable _fin_ moment where everything has settled.

“You’re trying to fit a square block into a circular hole—it’s just wrong.” Unlike most of the people acquired for auction—you’re allowed your opinion, near total autonomy. You still don’t get what amused the Colonel so much when he shoved you unceremoniously into this teacher’s classroom—the halls empty, the air thick and hot. Peter has bristled, but after a hushed conversation you hadn’t been privy to, he’d simply asked you if you wanted a glass of water.

“But which one’s wrong? The square, or the hole?” Turning so that he can sit on the top of the class desk closest to him. His hands are white with chalk dust, and it has left streaks across his dark shirt. He looks harmless, and kind, and easy going with the way he lifts his shoulders with a hapless _who knows_ look in his eyes. But below that, beneath the tenth grade English teach, was a sharpness that reminded you of someone—even though you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

“Does it matter?” Leaning back, smoothing fingers over words on a page a hundred years old—you can feel the slightest bump of ink against your fingertips. Little reminders of something long gone—a world forgotten.

“Of course it matters!” The exuberance was so naturally _him_ —even if you hadn’t been spending hours with the man every day for the last four months, you would see how the enthusiasm for debate _lived_ in him. “You’re either giving the wrong answer—or asking the wrong question. I think that matters an awful lot.”  His hands spread and you have to laugh—you feel like one of his students, the sixteen year olds shuffling and shrugging their way through the day. You’d given up trying to relate to the children he taught—only two years your junior, though they seem impossibly young. Whole lifetimes away from who you had been forced to become in less than a year on the ground.

“Okay,” you exhale the word, “I can see you’re winding up, and that’s my cue to get over to the medical building.” He laughs good naturedly and plops his hands into his lap—his good humor remains for only a moment or two more, before his face falls.

“The Reckoning’s today, isn’t it?” You know he doesn’t really follow the vaulted whispers following the fights—despite the fact that his family is easily the most prestigious in the arena circuit. It had taken you only a week or two to realize what this _civilized_ society did for amusement. It wasn’t like the grounders who fought and killed for things that they filled themselves with—honor, revenge, pride, safety. They were a culture held together by blood but there was nothing whimsical and thoughtless in the meaning— _yu gonplei ste odon_ , your fight is over. Their lives were a fight, and when they passed—when they _died_ —they could finally put down their arms.

Could finally be at peace.

No, the Republic fought for entertainment—there was a grand arena constructed out of what used to be a stadium of some sort. A large groaning husk of the world before—pilfered and repurposed for their blood sport. Wastelanders bought and sold for profit in the arena—there was something so old and _wrong_ about it. Peter had explained it to you quietly one evening—the only sound other than his voice the scratch of his pen on the essays he was grading. When those first bunker dwellers had stepped into the sun their entire world had tilted and swayed—the heat on their skin, the madness in their blood.

So they fought.

Their new world had been impossibly big, impossibly bright—and they couldn’t fathom how to carve out pieces of it for themselves. Families fought—blood feuds claiming favored sons and slaughtering treasured daughters. It wasn’t until too many years later that they realized they needn’t fight themselves—needn’t be savage and uncivilized. So they chose champions. Their best, and their strongest to fight for the family—it was positively medieval, Peter had explained. They had technology, but there was something primitive and trying about the world they had stepped into.

“One thing led to another,” Peter had gone on, while marking another essay with red pen. Five families made an accord—his being the most prominent—a selfish cruel thing that put their newly acquired wastelanders to use.

Some were agricultural labor, somewhere trained on the large steam powered machines, or the grinding electrical grids hastily kept together by innovation and faith. But the vast majority? They were sold to the arena. A gambling pit of blood and death where wastelanders fought for entertainment. “The families thought maybe the Romans had something right,” he’d said with that hapless shrug he was so fond of—never saying if he agreed with the assessment. “Why fight themselves, when they could make others do it for them? And make money in the process?”

 _Gladiatorial combat_ —there was something so tongue in cheek in the way it was said, the way the Madisonians let it fall from Cheshire grins and between glasses of bitter wine. By people who saw themselves as conquerors; there was so much fragile pride in the new status quo. A little of the old, a little of the new smashed together so callously that there was no choice but to somehow finding a balance.

You recognized so little of it from your Earth studies classes; such ancient history meaning almost nothing in the present state of things. How could the Roman Empire impact a station that existed thousands upon thousands of miles above the earth; a place reserved for Apollo and his chariot, and not a hapless lot at the end of the world trusting their lives to air locks.

Peter had let you see the textbooks that he stashed away like they were made of gold, and not just flimsy brittle paper. You had taken a whole week scanning lines about an empire over two thousand years removed from the earth. Of Spartacus and the revolts, of Crassus and his meteoric rise through the consul and its fallacies.

Blinking away the memory you can only smile banefully at him, no happiness in the curve of your lips; just like there is none in the blue-gray of his eyes. “Yeah,” you say, carefully closing your borrowed copy of _the Giver_. “First night’s tonight.”

“I guess that's why I couldn't get anyone to focus on the riveting exploits of Jonas and his quest for clarity.” He surmises with a lot more care than his usual humor. He’s fiddling with a piece of chalk between his whitened palms. “You’ve been asked to help?”

 _Asked_. He says it like he isn't aware of the metal collar on your neck; the scalding reminder that no one _asked_ you anything. Except Peter. You were _told_ , or _ordered_ , depending on who it was coming from.

“Carpophorus is the Republic’s champion.” Like that was enough of an explanation; and it was, Peter nodded with pressed lips. Carpophorus belonged to his family—a blunt instrument and a keenly sharpened blade both. The Reckoning was a tournament of sorts—you’d been captured only days before the last one. It drew thousands of spectators—watching the best and the sharpest of the Republic’s arena fighters—those who had somehow managed to get their own renown outside the families they belonged to. You’d learned their names from fellow captives who couldn’t help being drawn into the manic excitement of the tournaments.

Pricus, the mace wielding goliath who shook the ground when he walked—his victories piling up by the day. Flamma, the whip cracking woman with the harshest smile you’ve ever seen. Caligula, a poet of a man, waspish and cunning—his blade the only thing sharper than his mind. And Decimus—a wolf helmed shadow that stalked through her matches with brutality and ease. You’d watched them all fight over the last four months—it was startling to realize how long it had been, how second nature it had become. Standing in the shadows of the stadium waiting for the matches to begin—waiting for the blood to spill and the victor decided.

“Well, merry Reckoning, Clarke.” He says your name more frequently than you’re used to—so many people have nicknames and monikers for you— _wanheda_ and _tumbla natbri_ , big deal and mountain killer. Your name was some kind of reminder that this wasn’t normal, that this wasn’t _right_ —even if you could forget that for a few hours every day. When you’re sitting in the back of a classroom learning about Piggy and his glasses, or you’re nose deep in the newest printed novel fresh from the ancient press. You’re lucky—you _know_ this—but you can’t help the weight sitting heavy on your shoulders when you step into the sun and feel the pressure of everything that _is_.

“Merry Reckoning, Peter.” You say while waving goodbye and slinging your bag up over your shoulder—medical supplies and Peter’s ancient novel within. The building is easily over a hundred degrees, sweltering and caustic, but you’d gotten used to it, even if you still needed to sit closest to the window during the early afternoon when the sun is highest. The Madison Republic sits right where Kansas City used to be—the junkyard grin of teeth reminders of the city that was. The shattered remains of melted glass and twisted metal.

Stepping out into the sun you raise a hand to cover your eyes; you don’t realize you’re looking for someone until you spot them. With dark skin glinting with sweat and a smile too bright to belong to someone with a metal collar is your partner in medicine. A man maybe a year or two older who is broad as any fighter, but far too graceful. He reminded you of ballet dancers with how he’d shift softly from heel to toe, how nothing unsettled and nothing made sound. A graceful giant, as far as you were concerned, though he had very much surprised you when you’d first met. He’d been slick with blood, holding down a fighter who had nicked their femoral artery—the white of his eyes slightly red, an almost inhuman focus to the dark of his pupils.

“Took you long enough,” he calls from where he’s comfortably lounging in the sun; content as a jungle cat after supper. “You know they complain about my bedside manner.”

“I wonder why,” you reply, close enough now that you could make out the tattoos along the curve of his eyes and across the blade of his high cheekbone. He’s easily a head taller than you, a good few stones heavier too, but that didn’t really fit on how he carried himself. It was the lopping grace of a lazy feline, all rolling muscle and casual power. You wondered why he had never been put in the arena, but you’d never had enough nerve to ask.

“I think it’s the cold hands,” he hums spreading his fingers mockingly while slouching forward, and onto his feet. It’s still odd to see grounders in recognizable clothes—he’s in a loose white collared shirt, tucked haphazardly into charcoal slacks. Easily matched to the pale blue button-down and dark pants you’re wearing. The majority of the citizens didn’t want to see captives in their civilized streets wearing armor and fur—that was for the arena, for the fighting pits and the outskirts. “There’s a time a place,” one of the other teachers had said with all the arrogance afford to someone with much more prestige.

“Cold hands sound like a blessing right about now.” You were almost sweating through your shirt already, longing for the shadows of the stadium.

He grins. “Why, Miss Griffin, are you flirting with me?” Walking side by side, brushing at the shoulders, you can’t help jostling slightly sideways and nudging him over. He laughs and loops thumbs through the strap keeping his bag against his chest.

“You got me, Dax, I just like you for your body.” You say with all the seriousness you can afford at the moment.

His hand raises to his forehead, swooning with the breeze, “Alas, I am cursed with such ample and desirable assets. Will anyone love me for me, and not just my wonderful physique?”

People are staring, you’re blushing, and he’s laughing heartily. You like him best like this—joking and bright—because you’ve seen him when the shadows in his eyes swell and swallow all the good he feels. It’s rare now—or at least rarer.

“I surround myself with idiots,” you huff, “I swear.”

* * *

The bazaar that comes with the Reckoning is large—larger than large, but you can’t even put into words the sprawling landscape of tents and stalls. Merchants and vendors from the compounds across the Republic, who travelled night and day through wastelander territory just to be able to sell their goods to the citizens of the Capital—men and women who were happy to overpay for almost anything.

You saw the difference in the people manning the bazaar—the less crisp corners of their clothing, less metal and synthetic fiber. They wore leather, and cotton, and denim—things prevalent in the less advanced sectors of the Republic. You knew there were eight outer compounds—some in the carved out bellies of ruined cities, some in the dry empty of the dust bowl. It was in their eyes, in the way they stared and assessed the s _hinies_ —the slang term you’d heard more than once to describe the citizens of the Capital.

“They hate them just as much.” Your companion says, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He can see over the heads of the people walking around you—you’re stuck following in his wake, trying to ignore the hot touch of eyes on you. You know it’s the metal collar so blatantly obvious against the pale color of your shirt and nothing particularly untoward.

“What makes you say that?” Looking at the merchants grinning wide as they call for the attention of all the people passing by. They’re animated and jovial, dancing through crowds to someone who has caught their eye—a particular shiny that has an ostentation necklace, or a wandering eye.

“They don’t smile with their eyes.” You want to shrug away the sentiment, shove off the implication, but you find yourself looking closer. At the old men in denim and leather smiling at young women who fawn and paw at necklaces made of polished nuclear glass—the melted curves of window panes that had been left in the wake of the fallout. Warped through with color and curled intricately, set on a chain and displayed. He’s grinning all the while explaining how he’d climbed the tallest skyscraper in St. Louis to get it—but his eyes burned. The flat black that you only knew how to associate with anger—but it was cooler than rage. A charcoal disgust lingering in the flint of his eyes.

“Maybe he just doesn’t like the bazaar,” you suggest, but something sits thick on the back of your tongue.

“Maybe he doesn’t like the Capital,” Daxon says with all the preamble of a stampede.

“Dax,” you urge quietly, making him turn to watch you with red ringed dark eyes—you see how his brow tucks, and his eyes squint. The almost rhythmic click of his tongue against his teeth. All the markers of an unsettled addict aching for a fix—how he clenched his teeth and itched the tendon of his neck.

You’ve almost asked him so many times who he was before Leavenworth—the _actual_ name of the Capital—the words caught only by the clench of your teeth because something in your chest doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t have the accent those native to the deserts this side of the Mississippi—that rusty drawl that’s all tongue ties and poor humor. But he’s well spoken, crisp—he reminds you of someone, but you can’t place your finger on who. He looks at you like he knows who you are—but most grounders do, it’s one of the things that really set them apart from the wasters.

“Just a thought,” he hums casually, not breaking his stride, “a thought to be considered, maybe.”

 _Considered_. He said it without a hint of subtlety—without any apology for what he meant. Daxon had found you a few weeks prior in the humid darkness surrounding the printing press—the second Sunday of the month when all the surveillance equipment was offline so that the press could churn out the newest newspaper, and the requested manuals. The mulish _mole_ who ran the press sat sublimely against the hot metal of his machine completely unperturbed to house the small resistance you’d been minding for the last two months.

(He’d shrugged thin shoulders and blinked milky eyes, “who’m I to say?”

Say _what_ you were never quite sure.)

Daxon had gone looking for you when you hadn’t been in the main hall, and had found your measly band of twelve—the captives who didn’t have owners that held tight to their leash, that let them mind themselves for much the day. Those who could stash supply containers, or print messages in the monthly papers—those who could do _something_. Two of them were trainers for the arena—scarred and rough wasters from the least prominent accord families—one of the five who had started the arena fights. They’d cultivated fighters who wished to rebel, who didn’t soak in the arena’s glory until they were sick with want for it. Those who didn’t like the blood they’d spilled for entertainment, who lost someone they loved, who wanted to go _home_.

“It’s too dangerous,” the pros don’t outweigh the cons, the possibility of being found out, the mercurial manner of the _brassers_ —in comparison to the Capital’s _shinies_. “We have something planned.” _You_ didn’t, but one of those arena trainers—Javen—did. He’d looked you in the eyes with his one good one and told you tonight would be a moment to remember—the first in a rebellion. Something more blatant than ruined food stores and missing crates—something that thousands would see.

(He’d grinning at you with teeth more polished copper than white, “Won’t be a dry shiny eye in the place.”

You’d hesitated, but agreed—you tried not to see how he exhaled in relief.)

“What?” He’s weary now—but Daxon’s always had a face meant to worry. It’s in the soulful color of his eyes, and the gentle curve of his lips. You’ve stepped into the shadow of the stadium—the ancient sign reading _Arrowhead_ in bold faded letters—red and what might have been lights once upon a time. It’s slightly cooler in the shade, and you breathe in fully for what feels like the first time in forever. The lingering dust in the air flitting and faint.

You stop because Daxon has a hand on your arm, his fingers large and dark against the pale blue of your shirt—he holds you firmly for a moment, and you consider telling him to let go. Daxon isn’t part of your resistance—he’d shaken his head and smiled sadly when you’d gleefully asked him to join. You’d been so afraid to tell him, so nervous that the loose calm in his bones was loyalty to cruel masters—worried that he wasn’t who you wanted him to be. Who you knew who he was.

(“Don’t you get it, Dax?” You’d asked in confusion as he declined. “We can be free.”

He’d exhaled, thumbing your chin lightly like you were much younger than him, “Not like this.”

“If _not_ like this,” you’d exploded, “How?”

“I’ll let you know, when I know.” And he’d walked out of the dark surrounding the press, arms full of propaganda ready to be distributed.)

Exhaling the thoughts of the past, you firm yourself to this future you’ve committed yourself to. This newest sin with your name on it—you’re Clarke Griffin, you’ve killed hundreds, you’ve sold your soul, and fell in _something_ , if not love, with a broken girl. You’re so many things you wish you could take back—but that last one you realize you can’t. Because _something_ - _ing_ , if not loving, that girl who wrapped like vines around your heart had allowed you the clarity of choice—not every right choice was a good one. Sometimes it was black, and wrong, and so much that hurt and ruined—but it was still _right_.

Unlike that Sunday beside the press, you’re the one to touch the line of his chin and smile. You’re the one to step away, and back into the darkness of the stadium. “We’re going to kill Carpophorus.”

* * *

(“We’ll kill their faithful dog,” Javen had said this with wicked glee, low and hoarse.

 _No_ , sits on your tongue, but what comes out is, “how?”

Shadows sit like recriminations on the scars of his face, “I have a fighter from your clans…”)

* * *

The fights are a spectacle—grand presentations of violence, sometimes shoved into the narrative of a story—like the bastard cousin to Royal’s exploits on the campaign west. They reenact battles, parade the regalia of fated historical figures. You know the Capital is enamored by the ancient cultures—Rome, Greece, Persia—they shove it into the buildings they recreate, into the culture pulled tight around their shoulders. They loft the exploits of different times—the Reckoning gives them that, gives them moments of art, and drama, and prestige that doesn’t really belong to them.

“They’re a borrowed people,” Washington had said one of the few times you’d found him in the streets—looking older by the week. Taller, leaner, the youthful curve of his cheek diminishing, even if the brightness of his eye doesn’t. “I don’t think they like themselves very much, so they borrow things from others that make them feel better.” He’d shrugged, turning to look over his shoulder where a girl his age is hollering for him to return to her side. He shrugged, hefting up the massive crate you could tell he was close to dropping. “Got to go, _lukot_.”

The sun dips toward the horizon, turning more red than yellow, and you know their final performance is next. There’s an excited hush to the crowd— more than half the seats filled with enamored faces. Some painted the colors of their favorite accord house, some starting chants for their favorite fighters. Your hands are already stained red to the elbow—you and Daxon had been needed almost every fight, desperate to save the lives of arena fighters impaled upon spears, and bisected by blades.

You’d been _encouraged_ —threatened—to do your best to save the fighters. It was bad luck for death on the opening night of the Reckoning—well, death outside the final fight.

(You’d almost lost a boy who couldn’t have been older than thirteen. His eyes milky, and his smile crooked.

“ _Tumbla natbri_ ,” he’d garbled, high on the painkillers Daxon had liberally poured in his mouth.

The blood bubbled up between your fingers, hot and bright red. “I got you,” was all you could think to say, until you remembered. “ _Yu gonplei nou ste odon_.”

“ _Sha._ ” Eyes closed he’d smiled, and lived.)

“They’re telling the tale of Alexander,” Daxon says without preamble, his hands freshly scrubbed and raw. The creases of his pales palms still red, but you see how he tries not to look—tries not to pick at the dried blood.

“Alexander?” You ask absently, watching the torches being set at the edges of the arena. The sun is still in the sky, but the torches cast long shadows to those walking across the sand.

“The Great,” there’s something to the way he says it.

“High bar.” You know the general story—Alexander conquered the known world on his horse Bucephalus, a massive beast afraid of his own shadow. You’re pretty sure Bellamy referenced him more than once, but you don’t know exactly how the story ended. Probably in blood and tragedy—the ancient world wasn’t wanting for tragic heroes.

“The Rackhems really think they have a chance,” you’re aware of the politics surrounding the arena—the five families playing some savage game of king of the hill. The Marowisk family had the Republic’s champion for the last three Reckonings—ever since Carpophorus had slaughtered the youngest son of the Caldahl family. Isiah Caldahl—as the youngest—had no standing inheritance, no desire to be military, so he’d been one of the few Capital citizens to willingly enter the arena as a fighter. He’d been the Republic’s champion for _years_ , which was unheard of, until Carpophorus had unseated him.

You couldn’t count on two hands how many times that fight had been told to you—Daxon hadn’t seen it first hand, but he’d patched Carpophorus up afterward, saying how savaged even the winner’s body had been. Caldahl had been the favorite—tall, and broad, and brutal as he was. Of course, he’d ended up dead, his head rolling across the sand, the crowd rabid with excitement. A dual wielding swordsman, Carpophorus was every inch the Republic champion. Always found a step behind the matriarch of the Marowisk family—and the current President of the Republic—Jocelynn Marowisk.

“I don’t think the President’s going to let her guard dog be put down.” You murmur, and Daxon watches you with all the indecision you’re grown used to seeing in his eyes. Like he wants to tell you things, like there’s secrets he’s keeping to himself.

“Isn’t that what you want?” He asks leadingly, like he already knows the answer. He’s slouched against the bannister leading to the garrison below the stadium—that looks like it had been a locker room once upon a time.

“Yes,” you say immediately, eyes still following the grandeur being rolled out—the stage being set. “No—I don’t know.”

The sun had dipped lower and the torches are really the only reliable light now. There’s enough of them that it is easy enough to see what’s happening, even if the smaller details are lost. It’s this mystery that keeps the shinies of the Capital, and the brassers of the outer compounds invested—this _intrigue_. Making captives into immortals with borrowed names and pilfered traditions. The accord families knew how to breed injustice almost religiously—giving it an awkward and tilted nobility.

You know how some of the fighters _lived_ for the stadium life; the crowds, the adrenaline, the rewards. In so many ways the favored fighters were precious commodities to the Capital—they were loved, and revered, and yet remained still so very obtainable. It was something you hadn’t been able to understand until you’d been to a few fights—watched how the crowds were lead through their paces by the better performers. The _gladiators_ that could tell a story with careful violence and bravado.

“Javen thinks it’s the only way to break the hold the Republic has on the arena houses.” On the _fighters_ of the arena houses who tried to find dignity in any way they could—in winning, in glory. Artificial and wrong as it was. You couldn’t blame them, not with how they’d learned to survive in this world they existed in.

“Javen’s a rusty old bastard,” he replies with a swiftness that has your brows perking. Smiling slightly, you know he isn’t Javen’s biggest fan—hasn’t been since the two men had gotten into _words_ over Daxon knowing about the resistance’s existence. The feud has sputtered out quietly, but you couldn’t forget that manic look in the waster’s eye when he stormed off.

“A rusty old bastard who’s trying to help,” you coax.

He sighs, “Sometimes _trying_ to help just makes things worse.”

The rumble from beneath your feet signals that everything’s about to start—the bright torches flaring to life in the box high above the stadium floor. The illuminated woman is small, with delicate features and carefully perched glasses—from this distance you can’t see the ice blue of her eyes, or the careful smile on her lips. President Jocelynn Marowisk isn’t an imposing woman—not in height, or frame—but it’s the iron in her spine, the way her cane taps the ground in such a consistent beat. _Tap, tap, tap_. You can still hear that cane from down the school’s hall, how it preceded her by whole minutes.

How Peter had tensed at his mother’s inevitable arrival, before he slouched into that loose posture of his.

Behind her standing silently and thrown completely into shadow is Carpophorus. Easily a head taller than the President, a warrior wrapped in what has become statement armor—a formless chest piece that edges outward into etched swirls of metal. Its gold ribbed iron, scratched and carefully maintained. One arm wrapped completely in gauze—from shoulder to fingertip—and the other covered completely in steel. A shoulder guard narrowed down to slip over the bicep, and half the forearm. A hilt easily seen over either shoulder; the fighter’s infamous dual swords on display.

The President smiles and waves to the crowd, the adoration of her people making your skin crawl—they cheer and stomp. But it isn’t until her small hand clasps the metal wrought arm of Carpophorus possessively to drag the warrior forward that you realize what true adoration is. There’s a legitimate _roar_ for the fighter—the mania spreading like a rampant infection as a gauzed hand lifts in something of a half-wave. The fighter wears an iron lion helm—it’s gorgeous and terrifying both, dark shadows where eyes are meant to be and only the barest hint of a strong chin from where the metal gapes.

“They love them,” you murmur watching how Carpophorus takes a knee and the President pricks her thumb with a dagger too ornate for someone in such a perfectly tailored suit. She draws a crimson line across the lion’s forehead—red brilliant against the silver and gold of the helmet.

“Javen’s not wrong,” Daxon says at your shoulder, coming alive a little. “Killing Carpophorus would be a crippling blow.” You hear the _but_ lingering at the end of his sentence, even if he doesn’t say it.

You don’t get to ask.

The attention of the whole crowd turns to the large entrance thrown completely into shadow—a torch approaching the mouth quick. It dances in the dark, staggering and swaying, until a massive black beast springs forth. Easily the largest horse you’ve ever seen—black everywhere but the white bristle on its muzzle, the stallion seems acquainted with what’s expected of it. You think you hear Daxon murmuring _trikova_ ; the obsidian beast does look like a spirited shadow. Running along the edge of the arena, it’s rider holding the torch high—they sway dangerously enough that you think they’re about to fall off the beast’s back.

And they do.

The beast bucks, and the rider tumbles over the horses’ haunches and rolls twice until they’re back on their feet. Dusty and stalking to the center of the ring—firelight catches the edges of a black wolf helm, dark hair bound back into a braid that rests over a shoulder covered in a metal guard. Torch thrown forward at least twenty feet and as it rolls to a stop, a ring of fire igniting—it breaths to life dangerously, the flames licking high and hot.


	6. where the dead go to die

**Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.08 AUS**

Moments last whole lifetimes.

“I knew a _seken_  named Alexander.” Daxon says softly, watching as Decimus catches a sword thrown over the heightening wall of flames. The blade is red with heat, but it doesn’t deter her from rubbing the side along the leather of her thigh guard. The ring looks hellish, the orange and red dancing along faces, casting a cruel glow to the hollow gaze of the black hound. Carpophorus has finally stepped through the shadows, dragging worn leather boots through the dust. The lion helmed warrior’s shadow seems impossibly long—reaching out and away, swallowing whole corners of the arena until there is nothing but forgotten light.

There’s a voice drawling over the speakers, the words much more clear for those in the stands, and not in the bowels of the stadium. The story of Alexander, the boy king who conquered the world. You have Daxon telling you of another Alexander.

“Named after the very same conqueror.” He says as Carpophorus digs in a heel and shoves through the wall of flames. The fire licks and hisses, but there’s nothing but the whispering drifts of smoke to show for it.

“I didn’t know grounders were big on Macedonian legends.”

“They aren’t,” one second, two seconds, he smiles, “But Alexander? Well, Alexander didn’t have a name until—oh, maybe six or seven summers.” Decimus lets their sword sing through the flames, heating the tip—there’s a chant going through the crowd.  _Leo-nes, leo-nes_. The chant that had nothing to do with the Marowisks until Carpophorus—until the lion helmed fighter cut down Isiah Caldahl and painted his blood across the silver of an iron beast. The favored fighter hasn’t even unsheathed a blade, dancing fingers through flames, waving carelessly through smoke.

“What does this—,”  _have to do with anything_ , you finish but swallow the actual words. “He didn’t have parents?” Daxon blinks like he’s realizing something, before turning back to the fight.

Decimus is patient, it is in the way she tips her helmed head and turns her entire body away—blade dragging through the dust until Carpophorus grows bored and rushes. One blade pulled free to sing through the air in an over headed arch. Blades meet with a spark, throwing their weight outward and away until they’re a few steps out of arms reach.

“A father,” he sounds far away, maybe it’s because you’re both watching the exchange—slash, slash, stab, pivot. You’re no sword master, you wouldn’t even know what to  _do_  with a blade if asked. “He called Alexander his apprentice, not his child.” Carpophorus slams an elbow into Decimus’ collarbones, but she grabs the exposed limb and twists bringing them both to the ground. “Well, apprentice and a wolf.” There’s that same secret in his voice, in his eyes—they seem brighter than they actually are with the reflection of flames in his irises.

Decimus has the  _leo_  on the ground, fingers curled into the leather neck guard under a pointed chin—fingers bust open against the slash of metal that can’t help getting in the way of solid punches to the mouth. They look like beasts. The fire touching their edges with hot promises of pain, with reminders of all the hurt. Blood flicks and splatters, spilling onto the dust below their writhing bodies. Carpophorus’ mouth is red with blood, but a buck of the hips have the fighters tumbling apart, fingers scrabbling through dirt to find their weapons.

Decimus has other ideas.

Spinning sharply with a howl of glee, she throws all of her weight forward into her opponent—knocking them both off balance and dangerously close to the wall of fire, but the wolf doesn’t mind the heat much at all. Flirting with destruction has never been more beautiful—they give and take with grace and speed, you’re left wondering how fighters like this are forged. In battle, or strife—could something softer make their edges so hard? Carpophorus bats away fists while moving backwards, giving ground too readily to be in control—though that second blade remains sheathed upon a back getting closer and closer to flames.

“Alexander knew a boy—a boy with a book about a conqueror,” the wolf makes a wrong choice—she steps too close,  _much_  too close, and a leather bound fist slips between the swift handed assault and knocks solid knuckles against the black metal of her wolf helmet. “Alexander was an  _important_  name, they decided together. The kind of person who had stories written about him.” You watch him out of the corner of his eyes, how he watches the match with tentative concern—with a dark worry that bleeds and digs into everything that he is.

You don’t know Daxon—not really. You don’t know where he’s from, or who he was. You only know that he knows pain, that he smiles because to frown would kill him—that he’s carefully careless with his heart and he wishes the best for everyone, and from everyone. And now you know he loves someone named Alexander—it’s in how his hands stop itching at the red crusted to his hands and how his dark, dark eyes settle. You know if you were to be able to hear his heart, it would be racing. Love looked good on him; he was the kind of boy built to be full of love. The kind who would hold it in his large hands, and protect it in the cage of his chest.

“You were the boy,” you guess, because that’s how these things happen—isn’t it? “The boy with the book.”

He  _laughs_.

“Oh no,” his eyes still haven’t left the fight, if anything, he leans more forward—half his body over the railing. “That’s another story for another time. We met after Alexander was already—well,  _Alexander_. We went swimming in the summer, and sledding in the winter—whenever we could slip out of training without my mother realizing.” You can imagine Daxon as a boy—same soft eyes, same wide shoulders, but with a little pudge to his cheeks.

The crowd gasps and you turn back just in time to see Decimus throw all her weight behind a thrust of the blade—there’s a moment of stillness, a moment of quiet, until there’s an eruption of noise inside the stadium. Carpophorus staggers in an almost mechanical way—the blade plunged straight into the meat of an unguarded shoulder. A gauntleted hand reaches up to curl metal wrought fingers around the blade to wretch it free.

 _Maybe Javen’s right_ , slips through your mind.

You wonder when Javen had decided that Decimus was good enough to topple Carpophorus—you knew she’d been flying through the tournament circles for the last few months. Demolishing competition on a fairly regular basis—her wolf helm becoming synonymous with victory. There were any number of rumors surrounding the fighter who rarely removed her head gear. That she was raised by wolves in the canyon of the Mississippi, that she was some captured royal of the Waste who played the Capital’s game of king of the hill just to gain time.

Javen had shrugged away all those rumors with a laugh—Decimus was a girl from the savage side of the Mississippi—as you’ve come to realize was the generally accepted term for the eastern side of the former United States. She’d been captured in one of the skirmishes and sold off to the highest bidder—Javen had grinned his copper smile, “didn’t have much to say with anything other than her fists.” He’d chosen her arena name—Decimus, it had apparently belonged to another before its current barer, but they hadn’t been too successful in the pit.

Daxon doesn’t seem to have the stomach for stories anymore, his hands are pressed into the railing, his eyes focused on the two fighters circling each other. Decimus turns just as the torch beside you flares and you watch the wolf helmed fighter balk—she’s looking directly at you, dark hair having come loose from her braid leaving it to catch in the evening breeze. She’s looking at  _you_ , you’d swear it, but there’s only that single moment of consideration until Carpophorus is drawing that second sword.

The metal sings, and the crowd roars like a pride of lions—they’ve been waiting for this.

Carpophorus finds the blade’s pair in the dirt—they hum and hiss through the air, intricate patterns cutting through the tension, slicing through the dark.  _Leo-nes, leo-nes_ , the crowd starts chanting again, but Decimus doesn’t seem to care. Long sword molten hot from where it rested near the fire there’s a  _finality_  in the way they move. Dipping through the shadows and sliding through the light—your eyes hurt to follow them, to adjust constantly. The President has stood up in her high box—hands perched on the top of her cane. Carpophorus taps a blade against a blood slicked chest plate in the Marowisk matriarch’s direction—a show, it’s all a show.

( "Do you plan on running?" You asked Peter one night when the school was half a mile behind you; the stroll back to Peter's apartment taking twice as long because it was such a nice night. Cool, breezy.

He grinned, "I don't run unless I'm running _to_ something, or running _away_ from something." You think he purposefully misunderstood.

"No, for President," you supplied, "like your mother."

He'd frowned then, silent for so much longer than you're used to with Peter Marowisk. "No," came his reply finally, "I'm too warm blooded for politics." )

You’ll realize after that the fight had gone on much longer than you thought—whole fistfuls of time were swallowed while you tracked the prowling figures in the arena’s center. The sun long forgotten, the heat of the evening a distant memory—the cold in the air is dry and overbearing, it bites and sneers at every ounce of exposed skin in a way only nights in the desert can. The wavering heat of the flames hitting the skin of your cheeks, making each blink of your eyes dry and scratchy—but you can’t turn away, can’t  _not_  watch how the fighters have suddenly gone still. They’re facing each other, their chests rising and falling rhythmically, their weapons on hand.

“What happened to him?” You ask, because the silence is overwhelming, even the crowd has gone nearly quiet—their excitement little more than a dull roar. The President looks like a fallen angel on her perch—the pale of her hair made sunset by the fire, the curve of her smile almost inhumane in how slightly crooked it was at the edge of her lip. You feel the minutes pouring through your fingers like things that could be held in cupped palms or tucked away into pockets for later use. If only you could squirrel away time for tomorrow from yesterday—keep it stashed away in all those untouched places for when you  _really_  need them.

Daxon starts, turning to look at you with bleeding copper eyes, “who?”

Carpophorus twirls one blade, then the second—they sing and chant through the cold, splitting the chill like a heat wave at the edge of an unseasonable cold front. Decimus takes a single knee, it’s slow and methodical, and she keeps her hidden eyes upturned to keep her gaze settled on her opponent. Dirty sand cover fingers drag across the barely visible chin in the break of that wolf helm, darkening the skin with soot. “Alexander,” nothing more than a whisper, afraid to speak any louder in the lull, “what happened to him?”

You feel alive—a charge in the air, a thunder of silence.

“A lot of bad, broken up by the occasional good.” It’s flippant, and not the type of response you’ve grown to expect from Daxon—not the bone deep meaning in simple words, the sought after purpose in every turn of phrase. But he doesn’t disappoint, “Alexander talked about souls like they were graveyards—just places to hold the dead inside. Someplace to keep them so they could be carried around for the rest of someone’s life.”

It’s a feeling you could understand—the weight of the dead pressing down like pounds of dirt on your shoulders, making it hard to breath, hard to move. Seeing the fearful flicker in eyes that you don’t  _really_  remember—making them up in your mind because you know their supposed to be yours to hold. You have hundreds of those—grounders, and delinquents, and mountain men. All of them standing shoulder to shoulder in the dark places inside you that you’ve gotten so good at ignoring since Washington had given you a chance to grasp life again.

“Alexander taught me that you don’t have to die—to be dead.” It’s so  _sad_ , the way his eyes darken, the way his fingers spread wide. There’s a shattered love in him now, little pricks of blood at the edge of affection, at the ruined corner of adoration. “You can die a little at a time and keep…—that surviving wasn’t necessarily living.”

The fighters break like ice in spring—a sharp sudden crack of movement. Metal cutting through the night with precise strikes and rhythmic ruin. Decimus presses forward with a sudden life that had been absent—one, two, three. Swing after violent swing she pressed forward until Carpophorus was conceding steps—one, two, three. The sparks dashed up and away into the dark, flashing bright and foreboding against the cast iron hiding the fighter’s faces. Carpophorus stands close to the still smoldering circle of flame surrounding them, chest plate darkening and heating from the fire. The swords slide and lock against one another—both of Carpophorus’ blades crossed to catch Decimus’ long sword in their crook.

“At least the rusty old bastard can see talent when it’s right in front of him,” Daxon’s saying.

There’s something in your chest aching, something spreading out of your heart and into your lungs. Thorns, and vines, and rotting petals. Little pieces that don’t fit in you anymore pressing up against the insides of your ribs, throbbing with something you can taste on the back of your tongue—the air after rain, the crisp of snow and the bitter tang of falling leaves. Things you hadn’t even  _known_  before you ended up on Earth—before your entire life upended and you were forced to  _really_  look around.

Decimus is pressing down with all her weight, arms shaking with the exertion, but Carpophorus is locked into place. Feet pushed hard into shifting sands, arms half curled until they bend almost completely at the elbow. That feeling in your chest is a pulling thing, digging into your heart and making each beat a transgression— _thump_ , Decimus hunches slightly for only a moment.  _Thump_ , something coughs and the flames growl to life—taller, hotter, angrier.  _Thump_ , Carpophorus curves in such a way that seems against odds with what a spine should be capable of.  _Thump_ , Decimus misjudges something, the angle, her weight distribution, and her long sword slides away and out of her hand.

 _Thump_.

Carpophorus lashes forward with the right blade, carving through the air once—then twice. The nearly black metal of Decimus’ wolf helm cleaves and cracks. The drag of metal on metal a shattered song in the sudden stillness of the dry desert night. The second blade curves and slides across the form of Decimus’ chest—dark blood looking black in the sideways firelight spills like coal down the fighter’s front. She staggers, and even if you can’t see the surprise on her face—it’s in her stance. How she steps once, then twice—only falling to her knees on the third step. Carpophorus uncurls fingers and releases both blades to clatter to the ground, kicking through blood soaked sands to the staggered wolf on the ground.

The  _leo_  is curling one arm around Decimus’ throat just under the metal edges of her helm, putting enough pressure that you’re sure the wounded warrior has only moments before she’s passing out. Only seconds. It’s almost obscene, how wolf and lion look beside each other—the dark metal canine cleaved clearly in two, just between the dark abysses where eyes are meant to be. It’s symbolic, the way even as blood pours hands scrabble and grip, trying to remove the arm from around her neck—there’s  _roars_  in the stands now, the whole crowds bursting to life as Decimus finally slumps bonelessly to the ground. Carpophorus steps back and away as if the unconscious body sprawled across the ground is kin with the flames still dancing at the edges of their impromptu ring of fire.

There’s a horn, loud and victorious, and the flames are being doused—sand and foam smothering the fire in only seconds while bodies throw themselves from the dark edges of the arena. There’s almost no direct light now, but you see a large man delicately slotting off Decimus’ helmet, tossing it off into the black night and holding her face gently between his hands. There’s others—the Rackhems’ medical staff pouring in to press hands to the bleeding wounds, to spray gel and wrap gauze around barely lifting ribs. The man straightens slightly to look in yours’ and Daxon’s direction—you can only make out the curve of his jaw and the briefest flash of color in the distant torches before he too is wrapping Decimus and removing her from the arena floor.

It takes only the barest handful of minutes.

( You'd always understood Royal's opinion on winning, that it was just another kind of losing.

"Maybe they're be a day winning doesn't feel so bad," Wash had said after a particularly trying day, his hair slicked to his forehead, the collar around his neck hot form the sun.

"Maybe," you'd agreed absently, only because you hadn't been able to tell him you couldn't believe in such a day anymore. )

Now there’s only Carpophorus, standing just outside what used to be a ring of fire, weaponless hands only loosely curled. The President is talking, the crowd simmering to a dull roar just beyond her words, but you can’t feel anything. The air is too thin, too cold—too  _something_ , and you can’t breathe. Your lungs stagger and limp, all the while your heart beats at the back of your throat, loud and echoing in your ears. Daxon’s touching your arm, his face pinching with concern, his eyes look wet and red—but you can’t focus on that. You can only narrow down your senses to that tight empty place in your chest that hurts, and aches, and somehow exists despite  _everything_.

Pushing Daxon’s hand away, turning away from where the winner is being presented by the President to the rest of the Capital, you find the narrow halls that lead from the edges of the arena to the bays just below. Rackhem had the one furthest from the pits, being the smallest of the accord families, and under the flickering electrical lights you only have to follow the dark— _fresh_ —splatters of blood to see where the medical technicians had brought the downed fighter. You can’t see much—only the barest rise and fall of her chest, the dark marks on her bicep that are indistinguishable under the dirt and blood.

Your steps echo, and you see that what you had thought was one large braid, was actually four smaller braids curled through each other. They are freed, some coming unbound to spread across the lumpy pillow—so dark against the pale pillow case. You suddenly feel self-conscious of the metal around your neck, and the blood crusted into the creases of your palms—you feel like someone completely different than who you are. Someone foreign, and larger than you should allow in your own skin—a visitor behind your own eyes.

“Clarke?” The voice is rough, cracking and dry, an airless sob that lingers and hovers. “Clarke, I can’t—you’re  _dead_.” Said with all the conviction belonging to a death sentence. You recognize it somewhere familiar—in your chest, between your vine constricted lungs. In your heart. The ache reminds you that you don’t have to turn around, you don’t have to remember how his hand felt over yours on the lever—soft, heavy…shaking. He had been shaking, his fingers curling a little more arounds yours with every passing second. It had been because of that that you had swallowed down your own tremor, your own shake. Everything in his body said he wished to crack, wished to snack his hand away and never touch such a decision again—

—except he hadn’t.

When you turn around, the first thing you notice is that his eyes are just as dark as they had always been—set deep and sad, tucked carefully below a heavy brow furrowed in something like confusion, but all the coloring belonged to fear, to that hot angers of his, and that somehow tender hope. The artist in you catalogs every physical thing that has changed, yet somehow remains the same—the point of his chin, the blade of his jaw, the slant of his nose. A warrior poet slaughtered by his own hasty choices; you see it, like you always have. The apology in his eyes that so very rarely trips off his tongue, the curl to his lip that is just waiting to come to life.

Not much has changed in Bellamy Blake—except everything.

“Not for a while now,” you say lightly, all the air in your lungs sour, all the breath on your tongue wrong.  _Yu laik raun stedaunon_. It had been what Washington had said when you first met— _you walk like the dead_. And it had been true,  _too true_. You’d barely seen anything, barely  _lived_ , but it hadn’t been true for so long—hadn’t been true since Wash made you laugh for the first time in months, or Moira sat with you when you couldn’t sleep, or Royal told you grand ridiculous stories about talking animals and cotton candy clouds. Since Daxon smiled and meant it, and you realized you did too.

“They said you were torn apart by a wolf.” He’s growing in size, in volume. Stepping part the door frame like it can’t contain him any longer—the first thing you see is the metal collar around his neck. More snug than the one around your own, older, harsher looking. There’s a bruise on his cheek that’s split and stitched poorly, another along his jaw that’s older and well on its way to healing. This is the rebel boy who said  _weakness is death, fear is death_  with such sad conviction. Who loved, and loved, and tore himself apart until he couldn’t recognize himself.

“Only a little,” for every pound of weight that seems to pile onto him, you feel lighter and lighter. “A boy saved me. Seems to happen to me a lot, right?”

Bellamy almost smiles, almost steps close enough to touch you. “You save yourself more often than not. Really hits a guy in the ego, princess.”

Almost like no time has passed at all, almost like you both don’t feel heavy with a body count well into the hundreds. Your vision blurs, the tears coming unbidden, slipping from the corners of your eyes and down your cheeks—he hiccups, like he’s trying to keep a sob inside.

And then you’re folding together. There’s nothing romantic about how he clutches at you, how his fingers dig into the pale fabric of your shirt—your collars clanking and rubbing as his tears soak your shirt. He’s thinner, all that orbital bulk slimmed down and lean. His collarbones protrude a little more, and the blades of his cheeks seem harsher this close. Your blood crusted fingers dig violently into the rough fabric of his clothes, almost like you expect him to vanish once you’ve gotten a chance to touch him.

“I knew it,” he’s whispering into your neck, “I knew it.”

You want to ask  _how_ , want to ask  _why_ , because so much of this doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit into your understanding of the world. This  _new_  world. But he’s stepping back, scrubbing a little too harshly at his cheeks to remove any evidence of the tears. Bellamy’s tucking all those tender and soft pieces of himself away, pushing them back behind the cage of his ribs until they sat beside his bruised and limping heart.

“Bell?”

Soft, stuttering and gurgling behind a mouthful of blood. Turning around the dark head on the pillow has turned, blinking bright eyes as if to clear the fog away. Light colored eyes that were almost green, almost the color of forests in spring, almost light enough, almost dark enough. So much  _almost_. The cheekbones are almost right, and the dark kohl is so familiar, but it’s all  _wrong_. It isn’t the face you wanted below that wolf helm, beneath that cleaved metal. That vine that had been constricting in your chest loosens, releases just a little and it feels like you’re dying all over again.

Octavia Blake’s smile was more crooked than her brother’s, it curves full lips almost arrogantly and you have to reconstruct the image you have of this girl. “Almost had’m,” the words pock and slur, turning a little at the end until they’re looped and sloped. “Was I a good Alexander, Bell?”

“The best,” he agrees readily, sliding around you until he’s at her bedside, hands pressing to the dark of her hair, pushing it away from the dirty mess that was her face. “You did great kid.”

Octavia frowns, her fingers shoving at him weakly, “Not a kid, asshole.”

“Sorry to break it to you, O; but you’ll always be a kid to me.” He’s so tender, so loving, it cracks him at his most brittle edges, shaves away pieces of the monster he pulls around his shoulders like armor. “Even when you’re old and gray, or when you’re some badass arena fighter.” He finishes his words with lips pressed to her forehead.

The siblings live in their own world, somewhere away from the cold dryness of the hospital room, away from the blood on both their faces. Their edges don’t fit perfectly anymore, they aren’t mirror images of each other, but they’re family, they’re similar in all the ways that matter. That  _I’ll love you even if you hate me_  that exists in them both, that sits in their bones and grows in their blood. You’d worried about having to watch them shatter—before the mountain, before the choices made there—about whether or not they’d be able to talk about their broken pieces, to find things they still have in common.

“Bellamy, you need to leave.” They both look past you, to whoever stands in the door, “you’ve been down here too long already.” Indecision sits on their faces the same way, in their eyes, in the furrow of their brow—in the slightest smile they share before he’s stepping away, scrubbing at his cheeks again until the wound is bleeding sluggishly. He stops beside you, his tongue peeking out to wet his dry chapped lips before he exhales.

“I’m glad,” slow, weaving through all the things he  _isn’t_  saying. “That you aren’t dead.”

And for a while you wouldn’t have meant it when you said, “me too.”

But now you do.

“You should tell me all about it,” he’s walking backwards, his boots slapping the floor a little louder than you expect, until you realize they’re slightly too large. Until his shirt that is slightly too small, the fabric straining even against the much leaner frame he now has. “How you became not dead.”

“It’s a pretty long story.”

A shrug, “I’m not going anywhere.”

There’s a hopelessness to it, but he smiles through it—the ghost of Octavia’s arrogant grin. A relic of a boy who tried to be king of the ashes he made. Two fingers press against his forehead, and he turns to shoulder past Lincoln—the figure you realize now had been the man that had rushed to Decimus’ side. You see the glitter in his eyes, the wide berth of his shoulders—he steps in and fills the room with so many unsaid things.

“Clarke,” Octavia says between droplets of blood slipping over her lip, “fancy seeing you here at the edge of the world.” Her teeth chatter like she’s cold, and Lincoln’s stepping close to wrap a blanket over her—he has the Rackhem’s sigil pressed into the metal of his collar—same as Octavia. Bellamy’s had been that of the Porter’s—a family more interested in the smaller arena fights, and in the commerce they bring to the city.

( "The Madison Republic," Daxon said the first time you met him, his teeth impossibly white against the dark of his skin. "Where the dead go to die."

You'd frowned, still hollow and hurting, and so very angry, "That sounds unfortunately foreboding."

He'd only smiled wider, utterly delighted, "Doesn't it?" )

“Societal oppression and outstanding odds,” you try for casual, but you’re still crying slightly, the wet on your cheeks too obvious to start wiping at now. “Couldn’t sign up fast enough.”

She laughs, a wet painful sound. “You’re an idiot, don’t know how I feel about that not changing.”

“Yeah, me too.” Side stepping all the important things that need to be said, need to be out in the open, “is there—is it just you three?” You want to ask for names, want to throws them out like darts at the wall. Just to see how many had stuck.

“Us three,” it isn’t Octavia, but Lincoln, “And  _Reivon kom Skaikru_ , though she seems to prefer—.”

He hesitates.

“ _Reivon kom_  motherfucking-badassery.” The infirmed fighter says with a little too much joy, but it doesn’t matter—because you’re lighter, and lighter. Pounds removed by the moment. Because what had seemed impossible only minutes ago, hours ago,  _days_  ago; now seems so very possible. Bellamy, and Octavia, and Lincoln, and Raven, and—there’s another name that lingers on your tongue like a poison, but it’s tucked away into a corner of your heart.

“She isn’t—,”

“She’s not an arena fighter. The Marowisks’ have her in their underground bunker doing some kind of R and D. Real shady.” And suddenly the afternoon where half the city had shaken, all the lights flickers, and the military had mobilized makes sense.

Raven was still blowing things up.

It suddenly feels like you’ve been playing chess without half your pieces—reduced to pawns and rooks only. Straight lines and single steps. Only to realize you’ve had other pieces all along—knights and bishops, and kings and queens. The whole court slotting into place; you’ve done more with less.

You’re ready to play their game.


	7. wings of wax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Better than you at what?”
> 
> “Being human,” she theorizes out loud, “I’ve always had difficulty with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guise! I know, I know, I was kind of mean in that last chapter; I know, Decimus wasn't Lexa, but despite that there's going to be some good in all this bad. Forgive me? There's going to be some flashback scenes coming up to fill in some of the gaps; so pay attention to the time stamps at the beginning of sections because they'll tell who when/where things are happening if there is a flashback. Thank you for reading, and thank you even more for commenting, it really does make my day. You are all the best.

**Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.08 AUS**

You haven’t seen Bellamy or Octavia for two days—the Reckoning continuing, the fights drawing less crowds, brassers and shinies both focusing on the business the tournament brings. You know the siblings have been brought back to their houses—the Rackhems bitter at their loss, and making up for it by clobbering the lesser fighters in the arena circuit.

There’d been a message waiting for Peter when you got to the school—still early enough that half the citizens of the Capital were asleep. He hadn’t seemed particularly thrilled about it, but had picked his bag back up and motioned for you to follow. His mother requested his presence—and not just his, but _yours_ as well. The Marowisk estate was at the heart of Leavenworth, known informally as the Presidential Palace—due to size, and who owned it.

“Homey,” you say to Peter when the door is shut behind you—it’s double wide and _large_. The kind you imagine belonged more in castles than a sprawling building in the middle of a ruined city. There’s nothing personal about the front room—no pictures on the walls, no possessions leaning against walls of on tables. Just sharp and clean surfaces and bright, _bright_ lights. You wonder how much power this building alone consumes—you wonder if the people in the lower districts of the city realize how much of their hard work is just for the luxury of the elite.

“Yeah,” Peter demurs, clearly uncomfortable, “mom likes the presentation of it.” He’s not a large man, but he seems even smaller in the high vaulted ceilings of his childhood home. The gray-blue of his eyes murky, the twist to his lips unsure—it was how Wells looks when he contemplated his father. A man of absolute power who was neither good, nor bad. Just— _was_.

“The _I’m better than you_ of it?” You guess, and Peter twists to look at you with something of a confirmation in his face, but his eyes snap to whoever’s behind you.

“More like the most polite fuck-you she could think of,” bellows a voice from somewhere across the first floor—it scratches at your memories, but you can’t place it until you hear the _thunk_ of military issue boots. Turning around you watch the Colonel glide out from somewhere hidden, a crisp green apple in his hand that has a single bite removed from it. His gray, gray eyes are grinning and slick, and you feel something of a child trickle down your spine. _Why is he here_ ringing through and through, but you’re not left guessing for long.

“Jac,” Peter warns, his lips pressing together, his tone bitching low.

“Oh lighten up baby brother,” the Colonel laughs, swaggering forward while taking another bite of his apple. You realize now who Peter has reminded you of—their faces are like mirrors of each other, slightly warped, slightly _off_. Same jaw, same nose, even the same low tilt of their brow—but it’s the eyes that change the whole alignment of both their faces. The warm robin egg blue of Peter’s eyes, and the winter storm that was the gray of the Colonel’s.

“You’re three minutes older, can we knock off the baby brother shit?”

“A lot can happen in three minutes,” the officer has stopped just in front of you, despite the shove to his shoulder from his brother—he’s more muscular, his frame build to not be moved easily. He’s looking down at you with cool, cool eyes—his mother’s eyes. “I reckon the mountain killer here know that, hm?” He’s lost some of that sun-madness, but it’s too much a part of him now—too deep in his blood and bones to go away entirely. There’s the manic tick of his fingers against the green skin of his apple, and the incessant clicking of his tongue against his teeth.

“A lot,” you agree, because you _know_ you’ve killed more people than he has—know it’s taken less than three minutes each time. Not the actual process—but the decision, the _knowledge_ that you’re going to do something. A rocket burst, a missile, and a lever—three decisions, and nine minutes. The Colonel is watching you, looking for something—and he must find it because he wheels around with a loud bark of laughter.

“Cold as ice, this one! She’d slit my throat twice before breakfast if you gave her some dental floss,” it’s said with delight as he walks away, like you’ve lived up to some standard you weren’t aware of. “Mother wants your substitute teacher to patch up the family dog.” Hand waved over his shoulder, still laughing as he turns the corner and vanishes.

“Sorry about Jackson,” Peter says with tight anger, “he’s never known when to keep his damn mouth shut.”

You want to tell him that the Colonel’s words are the least of your worries when it comes to the brute of a man—but you just shrug and try to move forward, try to push that all out of the way. You need to leave this house, need to remove yourself from the harsh lights because if reminds you of the Ark, of the mountain. It’s the _whirr_ of power in the walls.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” you pause, “I’m not a vet.”

Peter looks uncomfortable, and exhales, “I don’t—Jac thinks he’s funny. We don’t have a dog, he means—.”

* * *

The halls are crumbling at the edges—but only if you’re looking close enough. Only if you’re willing to squint past the gold trim and the ostentatious paintings upon the wall—you recognize some of them. You know they used to rest in museums behind bullet proof glass—relics of a time before the end of the world. When people would flit and stumble through masterpieces with closed eyes and no appreciation for how long something can remain after everything else has died—after the long silence and the burning oblivion. You imagine it as the sound of the air against the outside of the dropship—hot, and thick, and cloying in ways that you can’t even put words to.

“Ya’ fix Carpophorus up, and you get gone,” one of the guards says with a drawling indifference—he’s older than most of the guards you’ve seen—late forties, maybe—and he’s squinting through the dull light of the hallways. You see that the bulge in his breast pocket is a pair of glasses and wonder why he isn’t bothering to put them on. “Simple as that.”

“And it had to be me, because?”

“Because I don’t ask stupid fucking questions, and you shouldn’t either.” His much younger and much louder partner sneers from his position five steps behind you, his rifle held more carelessly.

“Dominick,” the older guard scolds, his milky eyes rolling slightly. The younger guard—Dominick, apparently—scoffs and goes back to glowing down the hall. “It’s you because you spend your afternoons with the ma’am’s son—ya’ haven’t tried gutting him in any manner of whimsy. Ma’am is real particular on who gets to stitch her pet up—favorite and all. Last healer tried to get right slick with a poisoned blade, just barely saved the mutt before we were down a Champion.”

You can imagine it—someone secreting in a poisoned blade under the guise of being a healer. It isn’t the type of scheme that has Javen’s fingerprints—but he isn’t the only one stringing together the rebels of the Capital. There’s men and women who would slit your throat wearing a smile.

“Fair enough,” you comment with the barest nod. Watching someone die in a fight to the death—knowingly—was different than slitting someone’s throat in cold blood. You like to imagine you aren’t capable of that—that somewhere in the dark you’ve immersed yourself, you’ve still managed not to completely cross that line.

“The mutt’ll snap some teeth at you—don’t mind’m. S’all bark and no bite.” You want to point out that you’ve seen the fights and nothing about the fighter says _all bark and no bite_. Carpophorus looks like the type that would have a particularly nasty bite.

“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

He grins—human after all—and hits his knuckles twice on the door, before pushing it open and letting it swing inward. There’s lights inside the room are situated in such way that every profile is thrown into contrast with everything around it. Long shadows, blinking pockets of brightness, and swimming pools of dark. Carpophorus sits on a bench in the darkest blemish of dark in the room—armor dirty, and bloody, and so much more worn that it had been two days ago when in the arena with Decimus at the Reckoning’s open.

“You two play nice now, y’hear?” The old guard laughs before hooking the handle of the door with his finger and pulling it closed.

Up close the dead bronze gaze of the lion is unnerving—there’s a textured life there, a facsimile of a soul poured into the frozen expression of menace. Large carved fangs dip down beside the curved slashes where eyes are meant to look out from—you see only dark in those slots now, but you can _feel_ the burn of eyes on you. The fighter’s smaller this close and it’s then that you realize you’ve only been able to judge the Champion’s size in comparison to the President—a woman who made _you_ feel tall—and Octavia who wasn’t particularly large herself.

Slumped and silent, Carpophorus just _waits_.

“President Marowisk wanted me to take a look at—,” fingers gesturing vaguely—the shoulder would that Octavia had inflicted at the beginning, and the collection of nicks and scratches that had been received since. There’s no response, just the barest shift of limbs that make leather groan and armor click—it’s beautiful armor. Ornate in many ways, carved with a careless cruelty that was still somehow beautiful—the brush of intricate flowers at the collarbones—no, not flowers. A laurel; the leaves carefully crafted and pressed.

Carpophorus’ collar isn’t the large bulky thing that almost all are—no, it’s smaller and pressed into the tan skin beneath the leather neck guard. You never saw it during fights, it was always hidden away which gave the illusion that the Champion fought for the Republic of their own volition. Gold, and thin, and fitted snugly—a pet lion in a jewel encrusted collar.

Within arm’s reach, you wait for the bark—or the bite—but there’s nothing. Just two bottomless black spaces where eyes are meant to be—and the barest line of a nose, and the curve of lips within the helmet’s shadow. Leather groans and creaks as you unfasten the buckles, the warrior is stoic—even if Clarke can’t see beneath the lion helmet she wears. Skin dirty and golden, the blood from the battle bright.

“You should take care of yourself,” you doesn’t know why you care, but you’ve been watching these fighters for months now. How fully they throw themselves into the fights—injured and broken they slash, and cut, and kill. There’s a desperate nobility to it—a savage life that breathes with each and every motion. “It’s dangerous to go into fights injured.”

Finally after long minutes tugging and pulling at leather wraps and cords, you can remove the shoulder and bicep guard. It sticks to old blood and sweat, sand falling out like it had been stuck there for a while. You know Carpophorus has been fighting non-stop since the beginning of the tournament—the gem to the Marowisk house. Their best cold blooded killer.

“You guys sure bring _strong and silent_ to a whole new level, huh?” It’s meant to be a joke, but you know you won’t get any laughter. Only Daxon and Washington seem capable of humor.

You’re gentle and careful with the gauntlets, these gladiator types seem particularly proud of the armor they’ve earned—but everything falls away when you see the telltale curve of ink on Carpophorus’ arm. It isn’t a surprise, many of the slaves have ink—tribal marks from their homes, ones they earned in the arena. You’ve realized that they tend to hide the ones from their homes—the ones that actually mean something to them. It is something that reminds them of who they were before brutal battle and iron collars.

But you’ve seen this one before.

Four perfectly matched points hugging a toned bicep, there’s a new scar cut through it—but you know this one.

Carpophorus doesn’t move or flinch, that damned lion helm perfectly sculpted out of bronze and metal and harsh leather. Doesn’t balk or shy away when you frantically claw and peel at the buckle that kept the barrier in place.

An eternity passes before you find the molten green of familiar eyes. They’re lined in rust colored powder, not in the pattern you’re familiar with—it is somehow more dangerous—haphazard and mindless. The manic drag of fingertips before battle, hints of sand and grit stuck into the mixture.

“Lexa.” The girl before you blinks slowly, light colored eyes sharp, but distant—foggy in an unusual way—it’s like she can’t recognize her own name. How long has it been since she’s heard it?

The anger, and hate, and pain that has been sitting inside you for all these months is stunned into silence. For now.

“ _Klark_.” Lexa says quietly, her voice is different—nasal and rough, like she doesn’t talk often, like her nose has been broken too many times in succession, and never set properly. You are already thinking about all the injuries you’d witnessed Carpophorus take in only the few months you’d been here.

Dislocated shoulder, gash to the leg, chest, arm, multiple head injuries.

“What are you doing here?” The questions are building, piling on top of each other, and you can’t put them in proper order. “How were you captured?” And then a sudden realization, a sudden weight.

“How long?” Had she been here the whole time you _ruminated_? Had anyone known?

Lexa just stares, the bruise on her eye socket inflamed and bleeding, her lip split. But those eyes—darker, maybe, but there is still that ancient weight about them. Of everything that was going on inside the commander, that no one—not even you—would be privy too.

“A few seasons.” The slight lift to her brows shows an unfamiliar uncertainty—Lexa doesn’t know exactly how long—but it is gone quickly, pushed back under that blasé expression and slow, controlled breathing.

You don’t know what you expected exactly—this first meeting since the mountain—but it wasn’t this silence.

And that is what makes you angry—you doesn’t want regret from this girl, but you want _something_. It boils low in your stomach, all the _bad_ that’s been festering since that night, and it spills over.

Shoving hands that had just been intent on healing roughly into both shoulders of the _gladiator_ in front of you—there’s something satisfying about taking away Lexa’s title, her shield, and guard, and _excuse_ —and it’s enough to almost topple the brunette.

Catching your wrists in either of her own, she holds them in a firm grip, leaving knuckles pressed into sweaty tanned skin. Still hot from the sun, and battle, and the _life_ that seems to always pour off Lexa.

The pulsing life that lingers in her skin, in her movements, when it can’t seem to touch her calculating eyes.

You struggle. Pulling at your captured hands until you’re both on your feet and your breaths are coming in quick, untimed pants—Lexa seems unbothered, the defined muscles of her arms and shoulders flexing with every particularly jarring pull. But then she seems to realize—there’s a clench to her jaw, and fast exhale through her nose, and her fingers are opening just enough to release you.

You’re standing in each other’s space, breath mingling, eyes caught, and you don’t know what to do—because this girl is inside you, she’s grown like vines around your heart and through your lungs, and you can’t imagine what life would be like away from that tight hold.

“Do you feel better?” It throws you back to the side of a mountain, to a man with a gun, and vengeance in your heart.

So much has changed since then, so much.

But not that.

“No.”

Lexa nods slightly, just the barest downward tip of her chin, while her hands fall to her sides, confident—it seems—that you won’t attack again.

Or maybe just accepting that you will.

Turning slightly to the side, Lexa hooks two fingers into the edge of her metal helm and tucks it under her arm. Knowing who she is now, you can see the differences—Lexa, the commander, had been regal and composed, she’d been lofty and unflinching. A royal in every sense but the gown.

This Lexa—this arena fighter, this _gladiator_ —is aggressive and loose, an animal let out of the dark just long enough to tear into another before being shackled and caged again. There’s something inherently primal and bestial about her—maybe it had always been there, and no one had ever thought to look. She’s crowd pleasing swagger, but then again, Lexa has always been good at being who people wanted her to be.

“Where are you going?” You don’t mean it to sound so frantic, but Lexa is a handhold of your life before—some promise that maybe there is an out.

Even if this Lexa isn’t exactly the one you knew.

She’s still close enough.

“Back to the arena,” her rasping voice is muffled by the _leo_ helm being slotted back into place. It’s jarring, to see so much tan human skin revealed—inked, and scarred, and bleeding, and sculpted, but when you lift your eyes to find that human connection. You find only the dead bronze gaze of a great maned beast..

It’s almost metaphorical.

“You’re injured,” _don’t do this_ , saying this while chasing the single step between them. Anger licking at your heels, stubborn worry in your heart—and weariness in your mind.

“That doesn’t matter in the arena,” there’s an echo to Lexa’s voice, and you can only make out the neutral tilt of the commander’s lips from beneath the helmet. The way her spine curves intentionally forward—a god making herself human for the benefit of unknowing captors.

“Just,” why is this so hard? Why did the words stick in the back of your throat—lost momentarily in the anger, and bitter betrayal. Understanding is leagues away from the feelings lost inside your mangled heart. It is only the tip of what you’re feeling. “Stay.”

Lexa has the gall to tip her head to the side slightly, “Do you want me to?”

There’s no arrogance, no baiting hope—and that is what makes you grit your teeth.

Does Lexa have to be so infuriatingly untouched?

“It doesn’t matter what I want, I have to tend to the President’s favorite pet.” The reply is coupled with a shrug, and a harsh exhale.

Lexa ignores the jab, “to me it does.”

Blue eyes narrow, and the fighter in her must know she’s stepping over some line in the sand that she wasn’t aware of, because she sits down. Lips set into a slight frown, helm still covering the majority of her face. Dirty fingers lift as if to remove the bronze helmet, but they fall limply to her lap.

Tentatively sitting on the bench facing Lexa, you take the time to wipe away the dirt and sand from the wound. The skin is jagged and inflamed.

“This’ll scar,” you imagine if Lexa hadn’t been so determined to be aloof, she’d shrug. As it were, she only hums at the back of her throat.

“It won’t be the first.” _Or last_ , is implied, but you don’t want to touch that conversation with a ten-foot pole.

“That’s idiotic reasoning,” you settle with as you press fingers against the skin, watching how blood lazily rolls down the infuriatingly sculpt bicep of the conquered girl-king before you.

“But no less true,” Lexa supplies, her hands resting in her lap, fingers flexing unconsciously. In and out of fists as she seems determined to stare over your shoulder. The green of her eyes no less sharp, no less vibrant, but they’ve somehow—lost something. The spark, the flame, that passion that seemed to rush through her like waves upon a beach.

You wish you had to words to describe what writhes and thrashes inside you; the hurt, and anger, and pain. But all you can summon is a dull, “You knew I was here.” Watching for any shift in Lexa’s eyes—the only part of this poet warlord you’ve learned you can trust.

“I did.” There’s only the barest tip of her chin, down toward her chest, protecting her neck, throwing what little parts of her you can see into shadow.

“And you didn’t say anything,” the _hurt_ flares wildly again, thumping against the inside of your chest. Making the vines around your heart and lungs tighten and squeeze.

She blinks away the shadows for a moment, tilting her chin in such a way that she can watch out of the corner of her eye—she’s assessing, something you’d gotten very good at noticing in the short time you’d been in her presence. “Not to you.” She finally settles, almost lifting her shoulders, but thinking better of it and just tilting her chin back down.

“Any particular reason?” You snap, scrubbing a little more harshly at a lazily bleeding wound, “we could have been planning how to escape. Instead of just being good little slaves.” The blood on your hand is dark—you’d never noticed it before, despite how often Lexa seemed to bleed. Nearly black, though still red somehow. Rubbing it between your fingers, you feel the stickiness of it, and it feels no different than any other blood you’ve touched.

It looks particularly macabre on your hands—inky and smeared. Somehow more sinister that the expected red.

“I have enough trouble stopping every other half-thought rebellion,” she says, a dark edge to her voice—and you remember how viciously Carpophorus had knocked down the rioting fighters. They always were left alive, always recovered, but it smothered the fire of dissent. You’d watched it with knowing eyes—knowing their poor planning would just get them killed, but you hadn’t had the words or reasons to _stop_ them. Carpophorus had done it for you. You’d been impressed, and a little afraid—you’d thought about what would happen if your plan had been discovered. You’d wondered if they’d send their cold blooded killer after you next.

“Don’t try to make what you do seem noble,” more of that hot indignation, more than you want to feel with this girl. _You left me_ lingering on the back of your tongue like a fever dream—there, _so there_ , but foggy and unarticulated.

“Noble? Hardly.” She scoffs, and it’s the most _human_ thing you’ve gotten out of her, “but if I didn’t play the part of punisher, someone else would. Someone who didn’t care about leaving those punished alive. Brutality isn’t a weapon, _Klark_ , it’s a gift. One that sometimes helps keep people alive.” You can see how her jaw flexes, how her fists clench hard—the blackish blood pouring a little more heavily, and you have to press tightly to the wound to staunch the flow.

“Is that how you justify yourself?” You ask quietly, wondering what she had been saying to herself at the mountain. What reasoning fell through her mind when she walked away.

“No justification. Just—,” she doesn’t stumble, just stops. Her eyes flicker in the shadows of the helm, and she is watching you again from the corner of her eye. “Hating me gives them common ground, it gives them an oppressor that they can fight without retribution. It keeps them strong.” It would explain why Carpophorus never removed their helm—why they didn’t linger in the training pits like the others. You’d always watched the grandeur involved in how the hated fighter would amble onto the sands with her two flashing blades.

“And when they kill you? Who’s going to help them then?” You insist, not sure exactly why you care—though knowing _exactly_ why you care.

“Themselves, I imagine.” There actually is a wince when you dig a finger in a little too viciously. “And those who I’d trust with everything I am.” Leaning back, watching how Lexa raises dirty wrapped fingers to brush a thumb through the murky blackish blood before actually looking at you fully. “People much better than me.”

There’s a kind of humility you aren’t familiar with—not with the girl you’d always thought of as savage royalty. Brilliantly cruel, and aggressively rational. Someone who could shut little parts of themselves down to do things horrible and in some hard to ponder self-actualized greater good. She suddenly looks her age—maybe a year or two older than you, with the weight of so many on her shoulders. She’d been leading—if Indra is to be believed—since she was only a child.

“Better than you at what?”

“Being human,” she theorizes out loud, “I’ve always had difficulty with it.”

It’s the kind of admission that’s sad and enlightening—the kind that makes you want to laugh, and cry. You can only imagine how many times a child had to break themselves to become the leader who sits before you now—someone who does the math, who weighs the odds, who sells pieces of herself because there’s a better _something_ out there for everyone else.

It doesn’t make the burn in your chest any less—doesn’t make that hot coal you swallowed at the mountain cooler in any way, but there’s an understanding that you _wish_ you didn’t have. A rational that simmers in your chest with words you aren’t willing to admit. You don’t have forgiveness in you—not now, maybe not ever, but there’s something that’s close. Some tilted notion that waits in your stomach where everything roils and churns.

“If you aren’t human,” you speculate quietly, careful again—the wound in her shoulder has since been packed with gauze, the bleeding stopped, but the brackish blackness doesn’t speak well to how much blood she’s lost. You wonder how she’s even keeping her feet. “What are you? And don’t say a lion—I’ve had enough with your rabid fans chanting for one day.” You _ding_ a fingertip against the bottom edge of her helmet, and from the shadows within you can see how her lips curve—a ghost of a smile from a haunt of a girl.

“Not a lion, no,” there’s a lilt you recognize, not because you were so very familiar with it—but because it had made your heart race when she’d grin her light and airy words at you. Tender lips and a sword’s edge of a jawline—you can feel the phantom touches of yesterday so easily you nearly have to shake them away. “A wolf, perhaps. My father always likened me to one.”

The fabric pressed to the wound protests as you pull it away—Lexa almost wincing, _almost_ —but you pause. _A wolf_ , the copper _knowing_ in Daxon’s eyes, the heavy weight of his words—the story under the story. You always know to dig for deeper meanings with the gentle giant of a man. He’d watched the proceedings with such tender concern you should have _known_ , should have been able to at least guess that much. But you’d been too busy with your own conclusions, with your own schemes—you’d planned to kill Lexa. Even if you hadn’t _known_ that, it’s a truth nonetheless—you’re choking on the realization suddenly.

It’s bitter and thick, and sits on your tongue like molten ash.

“Alexander.” You say, with all the aplomb of a much delayed realization.

Lexa’s head snaps in your direction and you can make out the green of her eyes—fingers hooking in the edges of the helmet, she upends it and lets it clatter to the ground. God, how had you never realized how _young_ she is—command and severity peeling the layers away until you’d only assumed she’d been born with a thorn crown and a throne made of dead man’s bones. “How do you know that name?” She asks, and there’s just a simmering black in her voice—much like the blood in her veins.

“Daxon.”

Her brows furrow, and the flicker of _something_ that had been missing in her eyes returns—that _something_ that you’d been looking for since you’d realized who Carpophorus was. Its _love_ you realize—not light and perfect like you might have once imagined love should be, but the heavy horrible truth of love. It breaks people who willingly shatter—Lexa loves her people. That had always been that radiated from her with every harsh and slick word tipped off her silver tongue.

“It’s weird,” you continue, because she’s not saying anything. “I’ve learned more about you from strangers who thought you were dead, than from you.” A ten year old who killed a thousand men, a young girl who’d murdered her best friend because she was wont for any other option, a child that was a wolf and an apprentice but never a daughter. It painted pictures of a person who could have been mistaken for the girl before you—little shards of truth that fit into some greater whole.

“What have you—,” she doesn’t stumble, but she stops, before exhaling. “What have you learned?”

“That there’s a lot I don’t know.” So much, but you’re heart’s hammering against your ribs, and her skin’s too warm beneath your hands. Your fingers had been working, had been rubbing away the blood and washing the inflamed edges of the wounds in her shoulder and arm. Her shoulder needs stitches, but your hands are shaking—not horrible tremors, but little quakes that start at the tips of your fingers and rumbles delicately up your arm until you feel it in the very bones of you.

“I have lived a thousand lives, and died those thousand deaths,” she says looking over your shoulder like there’s meant to be someone behind you—her eyes soften, and squint, and look so much _younger_. It’s the reincarnation conversation that had never really come to fruition when the pauna had chased you to its lair. “And there’s still so much I don’t know.”

You’d always wondered if Lexa actually believed in the tales you’ve heard when listening to the story weavers—the half truths about angry goddesses demanding a reign of fire, or of heroes who took the fire inside their own chests. You want to say Lexa is _above_ that, but you never could determine why you thought that—maybe it was the reverence she touched technology with. Never fear, but with a nostalgia—like it had been so very long since she’d last seen a radio, or a control panel.

Sighing, you try shaking out your fingers to get them to stop shaking—to make them steady and capable, but you can’t seem to remove the tremor. Two warm palms clasp yours between them—calloused and slender, they’re a poet’s hands. Long tapered fingers and a narrow palm—these aren’t hands meant for combat, they’re delicate and warm and holding yours together.

“Where does that leave us?” You ask, because you want to _rage_ , want to tear her down and demand explanations—but you also just was to cry and _thank_ whoever out there that this stupid girl isn’t _dead_. That the vines around your heart and lungs feel more like a hug than a constriction.

“Here,” she says, blinking celadon eyes at you. “We’re here, and when—.” And _now_ she does stumble, she trips over her words and exhales loudly through her nose. Lexa looks aggrieved, and you don’t know why, until she’s slipping from the bench, clattering to her knees. She’s looking up at you with pale, _pale_ eyes and there’s things hidden in the green that you don’t wish to dissect—things that look like _maybe_ and _surviving isn’t living_. All the things you’d hoped for once upon a times—before missiles, and mountains, and wars to the west.

“I am yours, _Klark kom skaikru_ ,” she says with gravity—with you sitting she isn’t much lower, but she’s on her knees. This girl-king of twelve tribes, this second coming of Alexander the Great—a child conqueror who wore crowns like the heavy things that actually are. “I will take my people from this waste, I will break the Capital beneath my heel—but when that is done, when my people are safe.” She looks at you like you’re air, and she’s only just realized she’s been holding her breath. You _can’t_ take her looking at you like that, like you’re something she cherishes, like something she _needs_.

“When all that has come to pass,” she speaks and you stand, thinking to back away, to remove yourself from this declaration. But you can only find your feet before her eyes have you pinned—her chin tipping up completely to watch you with a knowing desperation. Bloodied lips curving into the smallest of smiles, something genuine and hard to make—you imagine she hasn’t had much to smile about. “I am yours.”

Everything inside you has twisted and bastardized, and you’re left with the realization of just how large a hole inside you Lexa left behind at the mountain—when she’d stammered with your fingers on her wrist, when she’d taken her army and turned away. When she forced your hand and make you kill all those people. A dark place you’d gotten good at forgetting about while travelling with Washington—you overlooked the hollow place in your chest while healing fevers and listening to stories.

You have nothing to say coming to mind, nothing poignant and meaningful—you can only see the sharp line of her jaw, the line of her nose, and the shadows beneath her pale, pale eyes. You’re reaching out to touch her before you realize—not the clinical touches of assessing her wounds, but the softest brush of fingertips to the high slant of her cheekbones. She’s alive, she’s here—she’s _yours_.

“I accept, _Leksa kom trigedakru_.” The words feel foreign because you hadn’t _thought_ them before they tripped off your tongue.

“ _Aleksanda kom gouthru, en trimani_.” She corrects, and your confusion must show somewhere because she’s tipping her jaw a little further into your palm. “Alexander of the path, and the forest—I didn’t have a village until I was found as the Commander, I grew in a merchant caravan that didn’t believe in invisible lines to divide.”

Lexa finally feels _real_. She isn’t the warlord of a thousand savage, she isn’t the lessons learned in war—she’s someone who was found, and made, and changed like you. Who had responsibility settled on her shoulders without anyone asking if she even _wanted_ it. A girl who didn’t believe in borders, who united her people because of it.

You _ache_ inside, in all the places battered and bruised. _I love you_ , lingering like a promise in your heart— _I hate you_ spreading like poison in your blood. _I understand_ in your meat and bones—but you don’t say any of that. Keeping your wings of wax far from the sun—and the burn that exists with those admission.

“Well met,” you say instead.

The way she watches you seems to _know_ everything you haven’t put into words.

But she just hums, “well met.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know how hard that fight scene in the last chapter was to write without using gender pronouns for Carpophorus? Or even a 'they', because I feel like that tips your hand that you're trying to obscure something. I had to get creative a few times to mask who our lion was. See? I told everyone to have hope, I'm just apparently a bit of a jerk, and like testing that hope a few dozen times in the in-between. 
> 
> Next chapter we'll be returning to Lexa's POV for the first time since Torn Down; we're gonna see what happened after everything went black.


	8. toward the sun, fear no shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re held together by stitches, and the hands of spectres—phantom touches that numb the wounds dug into your mortal coil, cast through your immortal soul.
> 
> “You’re here?” Said softly, but Daxon’s eyes are hard copper—questioning and waiting for your answer. He extends a carved out gourd made into a rudimentary bowl, filled with something you imagine livestock are fed.
> 
> Burning alive, you reach to take the offering, everything inside you protests—spilling in, and out, and away. “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter eight! So, I was writing this, and decided it was getting too long, so I separated it into two chapters. I'm actually proud of myself for getting back into any type of rhythm with these chapters. This isn't so much as flashbacks, as it is another side of the story; this is what happened after everything went to black at the end of Torn Down. Would anyone be interested in supplementary world-building material? I'm basically building a whole sub-society at the edges of the canon-verse. But. anyhow, thank you everyone for the comments, they mean so much to me. You don't even know how much I love it.

**_ Edge of the World _ ** ** , Mississippi Canyon, Middle United States, 98.12 AUS —— ** **[** _nine months ago_   **]**

They wait for you to die.

It’s never explicitly said, there’s no definitive confirmation—but it’s in their very lines. Faces young and dirty with hollowed out junkyard eyes—shards of manic glass dug deep into their sockets. Empty cuts of color where life should rightfully belong. Everything about the curve of their spine, and the twitch of their fingers on triggers say, “not yet?” Everything you touch is stained black with your blood, it pours from you like it simply wishes to escape and bleed into the rusty red dirt beneath you.

Daxon holds you together with his desperation—and his anger.

“Don’t you dare, Alexander.” He hisses to you at night while pressing your wounds and wrapping the worst of them. “You don’t get to do all this and just _die_.” You remember a forest and a gunshot— _born to hang, you’ll never drown_ —how Daxon had stolen your armor, and stolen your bullet. He’d lost so much time because of it—sequestered away into the bowels of a carnivorous mountain. Filled red with rage and poured back into the forests to hunt—all because you were _important_ , all because of some vision you sometimes wish you’d never had. That you never erased borders and stole a mountain’s worth of people on the back of a betrayal.

“I’m Heda,” you gurgle, the words swimming in the black filling your mouth.  “You don’t get to say what I can and cannot do.” You tripped in and out of consciousness those first few days—your body swaying with the steps of those who carried you. You recognized many of the faces—some from the mountain, others the asymmetrical features of the _drisankru_. The soldiers had simply shrugged and ignored the procession—no skin off their back if those captured worked themselves sick carrying their nearly dead.

You try to get them to stop, try to push the command through chattering gray teeth—no one heard, or no one chose to listen.

“I told you, _lukot_ ,” Daxon says at night now, when you’re shaking and feverish—your skin clammy and everything inside you burns. “They love you—each and every one of these hardened bastards love you.” You stop bleeding so readily after a while, the hasty stitches holding you together more than Daxon’s desperation or his anger—you’re not dead.

The knowledge lives inside you now, it spread warmth in your chest and curls its warm digging nails into the very meat of you. You’d thought yourself Daxon’s ghost those first days—when no one but he would meet your eyes, when your half-thought words weren’t heeded. You’d thought yourself his burden to carry and you’d wished to end that—wished not to add the weight of your soul to his mind. He didn’t deserve to be weighed down with the heaviness that would always exist inside you—alive or dead. You’d closed your eyes and tried to will your soul to move on, to fill some unsuspecting babe across the edge of the world, and be done with this.

You’d given up.

Until Costia found you. She was no longer solid, no longer filled and able to be touched—her eyes were sad and washed out as if she’d seen something she never wished to experience again. The corded darkness of her hair brushed your cheeks when she leaned over you to press her forehead to yours—her lips the softest brush against yours. She was a haunt—as she had been to you for longer than she’d been alive—the full moon bleeding through her colors, until you realized she was only the softest kind of solid. _Transparent_ , the word comes haltingly, from a long ego _gonasleng_ lesson.

“I told you, _skai_ ,” she whispered, “We’re patient. We don’t mind waiting a little longer for you, _hodnes_.” A phantom touch of fingers against the sides of your neck, of lips moving up the line of your nose and across the blades of your cheeks. She’s cool to the touch, downright warm against the chill of the desert night—the red sand blue in the dark, the fire light brushes the very edges of you like a promise.

“I’m tired.” The words had lived in you, had tethered themselves to your ambling bones and wayward heart—heavy and cumbersome. So weighted that you could not move underneath the _exhaustion_ that clung to you like droplets of rain in a storm.

“I know,” with all the warmth that should have rightfully been hers if she hadn’t dashed herself against your rocks—hadn’t ended her own life by tethering it to yours. You are a cord—twisted tight and strong, fraying those that wrap themselves around you. Breaking them, cutting the world from beneath their feet. “You’ve been tired for years now, and you’ve still done so much.” She’s laying against you now, her body blanketing yours and you feel the wind _through_ her—feel how she isn’t truly there, how you’ve stepped so far away from her these last days. Become less dead, filled yourself with more life—you’re so very bad at dying, it seems. Incapable of pulling that final chill inside, and pressing out your last breath.

“Haven’t I done enough?” You ask her, eyes closed so that you didn’t have to see how far from you she truly was—so that you can focus on the crawl of her fingertips through your knotted and matted hair.

“I can’t answer that,” she laughs, a light sound that doesn’t belong in this borrowed hell of rust and nothing. This place that is so far from home—she belonged in the southern islands, in places where the sun isn’t oppressive but nurturing. Where she’d glimmer and shine like her eyes used to. “Do you think you’ve done enough?”

Costia asks you this with a tilted chin against your stitched shoulder—it aches, but not because of her. No, because she’s dead, and you aren’t. You’ve failed her again, but you can only think about how she’d hold you some nights and whisper that she wouldn’t be mad to wait for you. That Enrik, and Gustus, and Anya would all mind themselves for an eternity if that was how long it took you to join them. You didn’t deserve them—in life, or in death. Pressing your eyes shut, little bursts of color splash against the black of your eyelids, little reminders of what awaits in the dark.

Have you done enough? You’ve changed the very landscape of the ground you were born to—you erased borders and smeared blood in their place. _Your_ blood. You held warring clan together with bleeding fists and desperation only you could feel. You’ve travelled past the edge of the world and found hell waiting for you—but how many had followed you? How many joined this crusade simply because you’d been their sword in the dark? How many suffered now while you were coddled by ghosts? Every breath if thick with something, it lingers and presses against the inside of your ribs and you can only bow gracelessly beneath it.

 _No_ , you think and it fills all the places you found empty and wanting. Your bones ache as you move and writhe, your muscles protest and howl as you pull yourself upward. Costia’s fingers tripping over your shoulders and down your back, her nails light against where the fabric had worn and been cut away. Your hands slant over upturned knees and you’re breathing too heavily, shaking too hard—you can’t move any further, can’t force yourself to your feet. And then large hands grasp your own, tight and careful, and you’re pulled upward to your feet—the world tips, the horizon swallowing the moon for a moment, before you can blink away the dizziness.

“Indra always said she didn’t think you knew how to die,” a rumble from a barrel-chest—Gustus smiles for you. He’s towering and only half-there. He hasn’t haunted you as consistently as Costia, or as long as Enrik—but he exists in a way that they can’t. Both of them had an idea of who you were, a promise that you would have never been able to keep. Costia thought you were the peace you felt when in her arms, Enrik thought you the nameless bird he’d found too young to see the hurricane brewing.

You stand and watch how the world sways, tipping this way and that, until you can settle into your own body again. Everything hurts, and your limbs are barely yours—heavy leaden things that seem unable to do much but hang loosely at your sides. One step—everything jolts, and the pain rushes up your leg from where your heel hit the ground. Two steps—the _smell_ of your blood rushes through you, metallic and hot, black as the night around you. Three steps—eyes are turning toward you as you step through the first splash of firelight.

The rage boiling in your blood slips away as you slump to the ground beside a fire—eyes of every color watching you. They search you for something they aren’t sure of—something that could be _anything_ , but it’s only when Daxon lowers himself beside you that something breaks. Slashes of white, white teeth in the dark—smiles turned red from the fire light—grins of wolves and sheep both.

You’re held together by stitches, and the hands of spectres—phantom touches that numb the wounds dug into your mortal coil, cast through your immortal soul.

“You’re here?” Said softly, but Daxon’s eyes are hard copper—questioning and waiting for your answer. He extends a carved out gourd made into a rudimentary bowl, filled with something you imagine livestock are fed.

Burning alive, you reach to take the offering, everything inside you protests—spilling in, and out, and away. “I am.”

.

.

Some nights, when you sleep, you’re in the clouds—high above all this.

Atlas in the heaven he held aloft.

.

.

 ** Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.01 AUS —— ** **[** _eight months ago_ **]**

“This is just ass backwards,” Marcus Sullivan whispers from somewhere just beside your ear—you don’t see him anymore, so much of him has moved on, but the lingering parts of him haven’t gone away. He’s at peace—in ways that Heda doesn’t often get to be, he’s stepped back a few steps and retreated into the parts of your soul you share.

You’re standing on a raised dais made of rotted out wood and borrowed metal—it creaks whenever someone takes a step, sways whenever the wind blows too hard. Sweat drips down the side of your face, along your neck and into the ruined mess that is your clothing—your crimson sash gone, your pauldrons removed. You stand amongst those who are going to _auction_ , hands shackled together in front of you. The soldiers hadn’t been stupid, they’d been able to correctly guess who would likely try to dash their heads open against a convenient rock—it’s foolish pride when you see just how many of your people are shackled.

Threats, all of them.

The soldiers hadn’t known what to make of you—a shambling corpse that didn’t seem capable of simply dying. They’d slicked their fingers through the black of your blood—only to curse and try wiping it away, as if it would burn through their skin. You heal fast. The holes where bullets had been carved out are gray and raw, the gashes where blades had kissed your skin are scabbed and dry. These men fear the unknown, in ways that the Mountain Men couldn’t understand. They live above ground, in the maddening sun, in the swallowing heat—there’s a fear built into them. It’s in how they lean backwards as if to step away whenever you get too close—until they remember their rifles and their armor, and square their foolish shoulders.

“I’m no history expert,” Marcus is still saying, you feel the _crack_ of his anger against the back of your tongue. Hot and metallic. “But I’m pretty sure slavery is illegal.” There’s men and women in fine clothing—like the merchants you used to see in the smaller villages. Colorful and untouched by the seasons. You used to hate them because your father would force you into a starched collared shirt that would never make you _civilized_. It wasn’t the clothing, it wasn’t the gold or the jewels—no, it was that _something_ that was lost in his eyes. That thing that made your father someone to be feared.

“Do you wish to inform them of that?” You say back blithely because this is happening—you _knew_ it was happening before any wooden dais, or interested buyers. The soldiers hadn’t parsed their words when they looked at your people—assessing strengths and weaknesses, putting a value to their very being. It wasn’t an unheard of practice—the outcasts participated in slavery, as did the north. You’d outlawed it in the coalition—another sore point in the tension between Trigedakru and Azgedakru. You’d put a firm end to their traditions, you’d made your will law—made them bend the knee, and took from them.

“Nope, I’m good.” He murmurs and you can practically _feel_ the shrug of his shoulders. “They don’t really seem like the listening type.”

“They don’t,” you agree.

A younger you would have tried fighting your way out—would have damned the consequences and met this new problem with force. But you’re older, and colder, and not everything can be fixed with bloodshed and a sword’s edge. So you stand—eighth in line, shoulder to shoulder with a _seken_ and a men ten seasons your senior, lost in the shuffled chaos. The quick-talking man with gold at his throat and on his fingers would gesture for another—a Trikru _gona_ , or Medoukru _fisa_ —and then it would begin.

“A healer from across the Canyon,” he began while running hands up the young _fisa_ ’s shoulders, presenting him to the gathered crowd with a flourish. Goading the crowd until the numbers got higher, and higher.

“Kirk, you’re not going to let Rackhem get this one, are you?” He’d say to the large man in the back, who nodded sharply and raised a half curled hand with a bid.

The auctioneer would grin and turn to the tall severe woman in the front left corner, “but Nadine, wouldn’t this just complete your collection?”

On and on it went.

“You know what you’re doing—right, kid?” Marcus asks from that place always just behind you as you’re roughly shoved onto the raised platform on the dais. You’ve been stripped to the barest scrap of coverings. A gray wrap around your hips, and the binding you use underneath your armor—you feel the press of eyes on you but pay them no mind. Looking out beyond the crowd gathered to the crumbled city far in the distance—it reminded you of Polis in a way. The sprawling length of it, the far off towers and glittering reminders of what had come before.

“And here we have a priceless addition to any arena house,” he says while grabbing your chin and presenting you—clenching your teeth together, you calm the burn in your chest and allow it. _Kill him_ , whispers Anya somewhere inside—pressing out and against your lungs in such a way that you can’t _breathe_ properly. “Killed a whole company single-handedly.”

A voice form somewhere, “she has no marks! The best killers have marks!”

“She’s kind of small,” a quiet man in the front says with consideration.

The auctioneer doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t _hesitate_ , before he’s pushing forward with platitudes and lies—catering to those he knows, and those who are new. You can tell by how he speaks—the edge to his tone, the shadow in his eyes. You can’t turn at all, the chain threaded through the loop of metal between your feet prevents that, but you can just make him out at the corner of your vision.

Once upon a time, you were a merchant—you bartered, and sold, and assigned a price to everything. You understand that he isn’t going to make much profit on you—you simply aren’t as large as most in your _kongeda_. They grasp the rudimentary facts behind the kill marks every one of your people has—they assign worth and value to those marks. They quantify skills by how many bodies have been given to the pyre—and to them, you have none.

If only they knew what a prolific monster you are.

“One last thing that might interest,” the gold draped man grins the words while lifting a hand with a carefully curved knife; you press down the desire to twist it free from his grasp, to dip and carve out the soft skin just below his chin. The tip presses into your chest just above your collar bones—breaking skin and letting the black of your blood spill free. There’s a murmur in the crowd, a wave of interest as the numbers jump—higher, and higher, and higher; until only five men can afford you.

“And we’ve dwindled to our illustrious Accord houses,” he’s all cheer now, spreading the black of your blood up the side of your neck and across one of your cheeks. The men have gotten to their feet—anxious, eyes flickering, sweat beading at their temples. They’re not important figures—you can tell by their worn boots, and their starched collars—those who only dressed up to fool others never remembered to change their shoes.

“Him,” Enrik whispers, and you can feel the phantom touch of his finger on your chin to turn your attention to one particular bidder.

A man, still seated, looks like he simply had stumbled in off the road—his shirt stained, his boots crusted with rust colored mud. He’s watching you with cool grey eyes, storm clouds gathering. He’s important—it’s in his posture, in the necklaces tucked into his collar, in the scarless palms and manicured nails. Rocking your weight back, you feel the creak of the board beneath you more than hear it—the groan of stressed wood. You wonder how many tried to fruitlessly escape—pulling and thrashing mindlessly. Inching your foot closer to the metal loop and pressing hard with your bare heel, you hear the first crack of splintering wood. Rocking your weight slowly in a way that looks more like a sway, no one tries to stop you.

It’s only two men now, their eyes bright with whatever conquest they can almost taste. The seated man—from an _Accord family_ , whatever that may be—isn’t bidding anymore. “Make him,” Marcus goads. Position matters, placement is half a battle—if you’re to tear a beast asunder, from the inside would be ideal. The splintering wood finally seems to get the auctioneer’s attention, but it’s too late. Jerking both wrists upward sharply the wood beneath your feet screams and breaks—allowing you mobility as the loop is torn free. With an impressive length of chain still attached, you throw yourself forward.

Slipping between scattering bodies wrapped in colored fabrics, you end up just before the seated man—his eyes more blue than gray from this close, and he doesn’t move. A weapon—a gun—sits in his lap, loosely curled into his hand, but he doesn’t lift it, doesn’t move much at all.

“Reckon I’ve seen smaller,” he laughs, “risky move, waster.” He’s writing something on a piece of paper, wrinkled and stained, but it doesn’t seem to matter much as he crumples it up and tosses it over your shoulder. The auctioneer grabs it out of the air with the same flourish he’s apparently very fond of—his eyes widen, and he waves a hand through the air—ending the bidding war.

“Sold to Jackson Marowisk.”

.

.

For a moment—only a moment—you consider folding. Giving up and removing yourself.

Just a moment.

.

.

 ** Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.01 AUS** **——** **[** _eight months ago_    **]**

“Listen you dirt-mouthed wasters,” the trainer sneers with a mouth full of metal cut teeth, he’s short—barely to your chest, but there’s a crooked fierceness to him. He’s still yelling, but you can hardly hear him—his voice low and far away. He’s standing upon a sturdy stool so that he’s properly taller than the fighters gathered—half chained to the wall, others tucked into beaten and scuffed leather armor. Their helmets slanted into the silhouettes of fierce beasts—wolves, and hawks, and great cats alike.

Yours is a simple leather cap that had been secured loosely under your chin—a wooden staff beside your hand on the bench. Your match had ended rather quickly—against an aging man who had little to no fight left in him anymore. You’d knocked him out with two swipes of your weapon, and had promptly retreated to the dark collection of fighters from the House of Marowisk. You’d been privy to the inner workings of the arena houses for the last weeks—listening to the tongue in cheek talk of men and women who squabbled in ways unassociated from the blade. They fight a cold war that bristles and bucks, and is balanced so delicately you wonder how it hasn’t broken already.

Rackhem, Caldahl, Porter, Devlin, and Marowisk—the _Accord families_. You thought of them as clans, separated by invisible lines much as the twelve _gedakrus_ had been. They press against each other hard enough to hurt, but never enough to kill—goaded by ego, and soothed with pride. You ‘belonged’ to the Marowisks, who are prominent not just in organized violence for sport—but in the Republic’s leadership. A house led by _President_ Jocelyn Julianna Marowisk; a title you know only because of a conversation with a man on a radio— _my name is Dante Wallace, President of the people of Mount Weather_. You’d seen her rarely—a small silver woman who seemed incapable of smiling, with eyes cold as any Northern winter.

The people of the Capital called this tournament the Reckoning, a festival that celebrated a Champion forged in battle. Someone who was their totem of victory, their displayed dominance—the Accord families bickered over who this Champion was. Just as the twelve clans squabbled over the spirit of the Commander—each wanted it as their own, and would do most anything for a chance to possess it.

Habehr is a thick and dangerous man from the rusty deserts outside the Republic—his hair more red than gold, and his eyes pale as clear water. He’d been chosen by the two Marowisks that ran the arena pits to fight for the title of Champion—he was decent with a blade, but his finesse with a spear was truly inspired. You’d watched impassively as he pressed his body to the limit, over and over, determined to best the current Republic Champion in single combat. Patience had always been your largest asset when it came to battle—patience, and position.

“He’s too slow,” Enrik says from where he’s sitting beside you—slouched forward his forearms resting on his knees. “He doesn’t mind his feet.” You’d noticed it too, the way Habehr shuffles instead of steps—the way his weight is so narrowly balanced that only a light breeze would be needed to tip him to the ground.

“Too careful with his shoulders,” you comment in turn, watching the man rub thumbs over the great cat helmet he’d left on the bench beside him. “Their Champions lives in their manors.” You say into the dark, waiting for the feel of Enrik’s eyes upon you. This ghost who had once been a boy, and then a man you had killed. Blinking his eyes the color of rotting leaves once, then twice, he smiles.

“That’s very good positioning.” He laughs, the childish giggle you remember from your childhood—too high for such a large boy then, hilariously small for such a man now. “How do you intend to do that?”

Drumming your fingers on the stiff leather bracers on your forearms you listen for the dull roar of the crowd to quiet—the simmering excitement filtering through the muggy dark easily enough that you know the finale has come. Habehr presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and he breaths deep—he’s a few seasons older than you, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three; but he seems so very young in this moment before battle. It’s the nervous twitch of his glove covered hands, the sweat dripping from his jaw—how his lips move silently to steady himself.’

“Borrow his fight.” Tugging your leather cap off, you leave it on the bench—all your braids have been undone, but your hair is tucked into the leather wrap covering much of your neck and chin. Walking toward the would-be Champion silently you watch how he inhales deeply and pushes all the breath from his lungs until he wheezes a little. He’s scared, and young, and wishes he could take all this back—you see it in the shake of his fingers as they toy with the handle of his spear.

As Habehr stands you move quickly—hitting him in the unprotected front of his throat, he chokes and gasps, hands lifting to clutch at his neck. His eyes bulge—maybe blue, maybe gray—and you step around him to wrap an arm tight to his throat. He’s heavier, and also physically stronger—but he paws ineffectively at your arm, unable to clamber a defense together quickly enough before he’s simply slumping to the ground.

His helmet is only slightly too large, but the strap allows you to tether it properly into place—his shoulder pauldron is comfortable and reminds you of the armor that had been stripped off your dying body in the red waste beyond the Capital. You look larger than you are, it’s the silhouette of the great cat upon your brow, and the metal of your borrowed breast plate. You twirl his spear over your knuckles and test the weight of it—smooth wood rubbing the edges of your palm, and the worn grip fitting properly in your hand.

“Doesn’t look like borrowing to me,” Enrik leans back, muddy eyes bright in the murky dark, “looks like you intend to keep it.”

You feel it in your chest first—that burn to live, to fight, to press forward There’s a creak as the door is pushed upon, voices shouting for _Carpophorus_ —which is _you_ now, you realize. Hefting the spear over your shoulder, you exhale a long breath and blink the shadows from the edges of your vision.

“Toward the sun,” you salute your spectre before stepping out into the light.

You hear him faintly from the dark, “fear no shadow.”

.

.

You think that girl you had been once, would have balked at this monster you are.

.

.

 ** Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.01 AUS —— ** **[** _eight months ago_ **]**

The small trainer had made the Champion no stranger to any who would listen—and listen you did. Isiah Caldahl was the fifth—and last—child of Brandon Caldahl and Denise Caldahl, a senator and a merchant respectively. The small man had said the titles with a sour kind of reverence that made you understand that these were not respected individuals, not truly. Isiah would not gain wealth—that was his oldest brother—and he would not find his footing in politics—that was his two older sisters. His last brother was well-liked in the military and had no desire for any of the _prestige_ afforded to being a Caldahl—having, apparently, taken his wife’s clan’s name in some manner of protest.

You’d watched how all the fighters gathered had nodded their heads knowingly—even those with the desert still in the creases of their palms seemed to understand what a slight this was.

So, you learned, Isiah decided he would make a name for himself in his own way—the arena. He entered, willingly, into tournaments and became something of a sensation. A large bullish man who had a skill with violence—a skill he seemed eager to hone. It wasn’t long until he was fighting for the chance to be Champion, something that seemed to endear him to the family that had cast him out with his garish desires.

You suppose those desires paid off—for a while.

The sun blinds you as you step out of the dark and into the light—it burns away your actual sight until you’re left blinking your vision back into place. The helmet you had commandeered threw shade just over your eyes, but not enough that you aren’t forced to squint through the glare. Isiah Caldahl stands in his well-crafted breast plate and a perfectly polished pauldron on either shoulder. A sword just longer than his forearm in either hand—they glint and throw light away as he swings them carelessly over his knuckles.

“Are they having me kill children now?” He bellows loud enough that the lowest tiers of the crowd can hear—their laugher echoes in the grand stadium. Tipping your head you step to the right, seeing what his eyes focus on—not your hands, not your feet, but where your eyes ought to be. He must be used to fighting those who telegraph their intent—who glance and flinch and give themselves away.

“He has no idea, does he?” Enrik says from where he’s kicking up little clouds of dust—you can hardly see him with the light pouring through him, but his large and scarred frame passes between you and Isiah Caldahl.

“Not a clue,” Anya agrees from somewhere far away—her half curled body slouched against the edge of the stadium. She’s twirling a knife on the cap of her knee, a curled grin on her angular face. “ _Branwada_.”

“Well?” You realize he’s waiting for a response, and tipping your chin down, you don’t give him one—you see the _crack, pop_ in his eyes as his temper flares. The small trainer is bellowing and gesturing wildly for the attendants up on the dais. The President is in attendance and you can just make out the pinch of her silver brows—everyone is catching on that you are not in fact Habehr. Not giving them the chance to end what is just beginning, you rush this Champion-boy.

He dwarfs you easily—wide across the shoulders with hands that could easily catch your skull—but he’s lumbering and graceless. Cutting his blades through the air as if that would deter you—leaving four feet of spear in front, you rotate the wood within your loosely curled fingers and rotate the tightly wrapped tip around the edge of his left blade. As you suspect, he holds them too tightly—the pressure causing his entire arm to turn outward and you step toward him.

Whipping your spear up and over the tip of his short-sword so that you could bring it down harshly on the thumb of his hand. Isiah hisses and takes a step backwards, not used to being on his back heel. You’ve heard how he likes to charge—use his size and his weight to his advantage. A battering ram, the small trainer had said.

He _just_ misses you with his secondary blade, it curves out and nearly cleaves into your arm until you push back and away—the tip sings past your nose, the light dancing off the edge of the blade.

“You’re fast,” he comments while chasing your steps.

Scoffing, you stay easily out of range. “No, you’re rather slow.”

Sweeping low with your spear, you aren’t terribly surprised when he leaps over it and tries to break your weapon’s shaft with his heel—bouncing the blade against the ground and popping it away prevents the intent, but it does let him slice into your elbow, just below your pauldron. It’s impossible to tell your blood is black as you roll away and it becomes tacky with red dirt.

“Care to take that back?” Isiah taunts as he roughs the edges of his blades against each other until they spark.

Rubbing your blood between your fingers, “No.”

You’re no stranger to a spear, but you do like the apparent size and heft of his dual blades—they seem properly weighted, and you’d very much like them.

His stamina is impressive—slash, dip, turn, _slash_ —he hardly pauses while chasing you through the intricate twirls of your staff. The sharp tip puncturing him every tenth attempt—a carefully bounced out curve that catches his ear harshly enough to remove half of it. He _howls_ and in a rush of rage catches you with clasping hands—his blades forgotten, and your spear tossed far away. He dents the metal of your helmet with a naked fist—you need both hands to capture his second hand that seems intent on wrapping around your neck.

“I’m gonna wear your skin as a fucking _hat_ ,” he sneers—the madness thick in his brown or black eyes—spittle falling from his enflamed lip. _Clang_. Your helmet vibrates painfully against your ears, but that’s the least of your worries. Rolling slightly up onto your shoulder, you wedge your knees up and against his stomach before pressing up and forcing him away. Black dots dance in your vision and you can only roll up and away as he slams a fist down where your chest had just been.

You feel that tremble inside—that impossible to ignore rumble that lingers like blood hounds in your bones. The hurricane locked away inside the gilded cage of your ribs, sequestered behind rusted bars and sneering muzzles. This bloodthirsty Champion-boy foams at the mouth with his madness—sun slick and sinister. You wonder what monsters lived in his dreams—what horrible beasts skipped through his darkest nights. That swallowed his shadow and carved out the beat of his heart. You imagine they’re great beasts—impossibly large, with hands wide and outreaching.

The North calls you _Jusmuhnsah_ —blood demon—in the stories that live in the smaller villages; in people who never actually saw what you and your Jusbrotas had done. Breathing out and pushing that weight away, you feel the _click snap_ of that cage opening—the howling snarl of wind in your ears. You’ve died before—a thousand and one time—and even still it had not been the same when it was _your_ heart stammering, and _your_ body collapsing.

 _Click, snap_.

You had no desire to feel that again.

.

.

Red, so much red.

.

.

 ** Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.02 AUS —— ** **[** _seven months ago_ **]**

President Jocelyn Marowisk doesn’t blink at the blood soaking into the gray fabric of the chair before her desk—she watches the black impassively, and you find the exact shade of her eyes difficult to pin down. They’re bright, and glossy, but so very dry in their own way—tucked back behind the lenses of her glasses. She’s delicate; the blades of her cheeks, and the vaguely crooked line of her nose. The faintest scar through an eyebrow more silver than what had once been blonde. You watch the imperfect heel-to-toe steps of her walk, and listen to the rhythmic _tap click_ of her walking stick—a mechanical performance dug in deep enough that it was not even second nature—but first.

It has been but a short time since you had conquered this Reckoning of theirs—Isiah Caldahl had fought hard, but there was nothing true about him. A facsimile of people he wished to forget but never could—his father’s brashness, and his mother’s smile, a brother’s cruelty and a lover’s caress. He plucked pieces of people who would never really see _him_ —in his bastard’s eye—and he slotted them into the worn down and empty places in himself. You don’t know him, not beyond the blade of his swords and the crooked grin on his lips—and the words woven by mongrels in a cage.

(“Word is his father challenged the Accord families— _all_ of them.”

“They look alike, if the dark swallowed kindness and left only the bad in a grin.”

“His oldest brother sold his youngest into servitude of another house—a _loan_. Just happens the boy fell in love and stayed.”)

Isiah stepped too harshly for a Champion, moved with all the grace of a tumbling rock—forward, and without regard. You’d danced through his swift and brutal reminders of sharpened short swords until you’d been able to twist them at the wrist and have them yourself. You’d been right—they were weighted perfectly; you felt the heft on them in your muscles, letting them live in you a moment before you ended this borrowed fight of yours.

Falsehoods clash—lies grate and rub and always bicker. For as Isiah Caldahl is a lie—so are you.

You are a child-king with an unseen pilfered crown—you steal and covet pieces of people who could never be what the world needs on their own. You are brave, and dangerous, and hopeful; like Arling—even if you sometimes forget the latter, forget that hope isn’t always bright, and true, and right. You are broken—like Enrik. A child shattered young who spent seasons picking up pieces that never quite fit properly back into place—shattered and left, and maybe better for it.

You drag legitimacy around your shoulders like armor—covering your lack of village and your self-chosen name. You don’t have to be Little Sparrow, or even Ailbhe, if you are Heda. Your father carved the world into wolves and sheep, into leader and followers and he’d easily seen the predator in your eyes, even when you’d been nothing more than his apprentice—when you’d been young, and unaware of the weight on you.

You are pieces of people you keep so desperately clutched in both hands that they never truly left—they linger in your blood and bones, in your soul and spirit. A lie fostered by half-truths soaked in enough blood to stave of the uncertainty of strangers.

This woman—this _President_ —likes the blood. You see it in how her gray, blue, brown eyes stray and linger—pupils widening, lower lip tucking into a line of too white teeth. Cane left against the far wall, she steps up close enough that you can feel her heat against your shoulders—the soft cotton of her shirt, the hard pearl of her button—and then the dry coolness of her palms on the sides of your neck. You’d been stripped to the slightest lengths of fabric—at your hips, strips across your chest holding barely to modesty. Her nails scratch at your pulse points, pressing in enough to feel the sluggish beat of your heart—until they move up and over the clench of your jaw.

“Your name.” Her voice is gray silk on a forged blade—softness hiding everything just beneath. Her fingers curl into the dark of your hair just behind your ears, tightening to pull your head back so that you look up at her. It’s submissive, it’s everything you’ve come to buck and shake away—but that pragmatic monster inside burrows, and digs, and settles over the fire in your chest. From this close, looking up as you are, you see the difference in her eyes—one gray, blue, brown and the other milky and imperfect. Sightless and cruel, settled in a face that could have been kind—once.

Maybe.

“Carpophorus.” It had been the name given to Habehr, a name you had borrowed along with his great cat helm and spear.

“No, no, precious,” she sooths, but nothing inside settles. It’s condescending and cruel, hiding in the low timbre of her voice. “Can’t suppose I should be surprised that such a pretty thing is utterly daft.” She expects you to be dull—so you will be. You know very little of this world beyond the edge of yours, but you have a patience that is unending.

(You can think only of Daxon.

“You’re here?”

And always— _always_. “I am.”)

“Before the pits, darling lion,” the pads of her fingers curve up over your forehead, and back into your hair—it _is_ soothing, and that makes you blink away the sensation, but more than that. It’s possessive. “What did they call you before the pits.”

You find it unusual that she doesn’t _ask_ —not even her questions. They sit flat and unended on her tongue. The soft beige of her shirt is staining black in your blood—but she doesn’t mind, doesn’t balk or back away. If anything she presses closer until it must bleed through to her skin.

“Little Sparrow,” she can have your never-name; who you were before you were anyone.

“How fantastically tribal.” She’s amused and laughing, moving around your seat until she’s standing in front of you. Hands still on the line of your shoulders, thumbs against the sides of your neck—you had tried not to think about the whispers below the pits. Of fighters who knew the taste of victory, of people who were not truly champions, but were close enough. “They like having you,” a leering brute of a man had grinned, missing all manner of his teeth. “Call for you in the night and want you in all manner of ways.” Some lived for those nocturnal calls, some dreaded them—you still couldn’t imagine it, _belonging_ to someone in such a way.

It’s easier to imagine now with the President’s heavy gaze trying to consume you.

You’re weighing pros and cons, feeling the weight in your chest and the shards of glass in your soul—you could end this woman. Break her easily over your knee—shatter her skull, or snap her spine.

“The easiest option isn’t always the best,” Enrik says idly where he’s lounging in the President’s high-backed chair. His barely opaque swamp covered boots up on her desk, your father’s wood hilted dagger picking dirt from under his nails.

 _No_ , you agree, _it isn’t_.

If you killed her, that is a single woman—an important one, yes—but you needed to shatter their society. You’d been able to break the North like a Stallion with a careful slaughter, because so much of them relied on the strength of a Dynasty. This Republic squabbled and played politics—killing this silver poured woman would simply leave a vacuum of power in her place. Letting pauper kings and queens bicker and fight over a fool’s gold crown.

“Isiah didn’t stand a chance, did he.” Lips tip into the softest cruelty you’ve ever seen—it lurks and dips below her skin so carefully you would have easily missed it if you weren’t so close. You see the moment she digs into her memories—the spill of black pupils as she revels in the violence you’d caused. Isiah Caldahl making his last mistake; swinging your discarded spear recklessly to keep you out of reach, jabbing and twirling. And just as he thought he’d had you—a cut to your arm, a slash at your side—you slipped well within the reach of his hands and ended it.

His head bounding across the red dirt—made redder with blood—from the force of your swing.

His body had stayed upright for a few blinks—fingers shivering, frame wracked with shakes. The thousands perched on the edge of their seats howling their excitement after a single moment of silence. _Leo-nes, leo-nes_ , they chanted.

“No,” you respond, pitching your voice lower—slowing everything down, digging up your childhood inflection. Pouring the drawling North into your words.

“Confident, I like that.” Her fingers dig a little at your chin, making you stay held in her uneven gaze until you felt something crawling and uncomfortable in your spine. “What do you think I expect from you?” This time it _is_ a question, but hard down the center of the words unable to tip or sway. Singular and absolute.

“To win,” you surmise, lifting your shoulders in a way that feels foreign—your _gonas_ shrug, you do not, at least no so absently.

“I’m sure in any other house that answer would be correct.” She’s considering something in your face, it’s in the flicker of her eyes—even the cloudy one. “Any decent slave can kill another, hardly any sport about it.” She doesn’t elaborate, and you must keep your expression properly bland, because she chucks your chin and walks around her desk, humming to herself. It’s a dismissal—you’re familiar with it, even if you’ve never been on this side of it. The doors open and two guards stand shoulder to shoulder—your borrowed great cat helm in one of the hand, and chains in the other.

You’ve been properly shackled, your helm slotted over your head when you hear her.

Cold, and brisk—like a Northern wind.

“You’ll make a lovely statement, darling lion.”

.

.

And a statement you are.

.

.

 ** Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.02 AUS —— ** **[** _six months ago_ **]**

“You can’t stay with us,” Anya says from her usual spot near the barred window—it’s long past high-night, the wolf’s hour, and the moon is full. Dipping back toward the horizon, bright and almost yellow as it descends. The light catches the blade of Anya’s cheek, sharp and beautiful and so much aches inside you because you can’t look at her without Arling twisting and churning inside you. The man longing for the _seken_ he’d found on the streets himself—sometimes you forget where you end and Arling begins, sometimes you forget she’s even dead. Because there had always been something ethereal about your mentor, something other and bright and mysterious.

“Of course,” you say, sitting not on the mattress you’d been given, but the floor in the one corner unable to be seen by the door.

She hums absently, like she doesn’t believe you.

Your father used to tell you of the wolf’s hour—when sleep was heaviest, and nightmares realest. You’d wake from some horror with sweat on your brow and a scream at the back of your throat and he’d already be awake—dark shadows tucking into the lines of his face, yellow into the whites of his eyes. He’d smell like cheap wine, or grain alcohol, and he’d ask what you dreamed about. “What does a wolf see during the wolf’s hour?” He’d say with a clever grin, thinking himself astute and amusing.

“Dying,” would be your answer, always. Because it was the truth—a thousand death lingering just behind your lids, and you’d never been able to justify the feelings you could remember. To drown, or burn, or simply bleed away. You’d shake the fear out of your young bones and sit beside him in the moonlight.

“What a silly thing to fear,” your father would laugh. “We all die.”

Anya looks at you now like he would on those nights—the shadows tucking away, and though she has no scene, you imagine what sadness would smell like. She’s barely present, her being see-through and washed out; the only true coloring to her the blue-green of her eyes. You can only just make her out when you settle down on your side, arm under your head as a pillow—she’s looking out into the waste beyond, the only thing able to be seen from the room’s single window.

“You’re alive, but you not acting like it,” her finger reaches up to press into the frost on the window, but there’s no print left behind—no line as she draws a heart. “You haven’t talked to anyone in a full moon, _Leksa_.”

You don’t understand, and it must show, because she exhales loudly and turns to face you.

“I’m dead.”

Anya says it with the same blasé tone she’d said some of the hardest things you’ve ever heard—the letters hitching together with little lingering pauses, like the word could go any direction, even if you already knew what she was going to say. Sometimes you hoped, thinking it would change the facts—it never did. She says _I’m dead_ with the finality so many foster on death, on the end of life—but your haunts tended to stray away from being so bold, so true.

Closing your eyes hard enough that little bursts of color paint the backs of your lids, “I know.”

“Do you?” Anya asks incredulously, “Because you haven’t talked to someone who hasn’t been dead for a good while now, _strik heda_.” She’s standing up, squaring her shoulders as she always did before she told you that you were being _stupid_ , or _emotional_. But you don’t feel emotional—you feel empty, and heavy, and even your eyes refuse to stay open.

Your body thrums with the knowledge of what you’ve been using it for—violence begetting violence. The President hadn’t waited in showing off her Champion. She’d strapped you into armor that actually fit, with a lion helm painted silver and gold, and presented you to the Republic. Small in comparison to many of their fighters, she’d delighted when you’d cut them down. “Letting their fighters live is like salt in the wounds,” she’d laughed to herself one night, swirling a glass of clear wine around and around.

She saw it in shade of humiliation and degradation—you say it as a mercy. You’ve lived your life bloodletting for all manner of reason—you know how to make it look bad, make it look harsh, with the smallest lingering pains. You never speak, not in the arena, not before or after—not even the Ma’am when she asked her questionless-questions. She’d gotten over expecting a response, assuming you to be too dull to cobble one together.

Opening your eyes, you can see the moon through Anya’s fading form—all her color bleeding away into the night, swallowed by the wolf’s hour.

“You used to have nightmares,” you murmur, deep in your chest, but she hears you—spinning around until she can watch the half-lid of your absent eyes. “I’d always find you in the kitchens; you never wanted to talk, so I’d tell you stories.” About silly boys climbing bean stalks, and castles in the clouds—of glory, and honor, and doing what’s right. You remember how you’d sit on the cold floor, all the regalia of your station removed. You’d be cold as ice by morning, but you never minded.

“You didn’t,” she’s choking on the words, they escape, but they sound wet and slow. “Arling did.”

She right, but you don’t realize it until she says it.

It hadn’t been you, it had been the man who had been Commander before you—who had died in the mountains, with Anya’s fingers scratching through bloody scruff. Arling, who lingers in your heart like a bloodless wound—a reminder of truths that will never go away. Blinking through the realization you feel empty, and cold, and lonely in ways that you can’t fix. You feel disassociated with your own identity, and you can’t properly slide your pieces into place—the wolf, the sparrow, the conqueror, the betrayer, the champion, the teller of stories.

“I forget sometimes,” it’s a confession, “it’s hard to remember here. There’s no one to remind me.” You think it might be the blows to the head, or the isolation, but you lose yourself sometimes in the memories inside you that you didn’t make. In the truths that existed in your soul long before you were born.

“You’re _Leksa_ ,” Anya says, closer now, her phantom touch soft across your forehead, and down your cheek. “A silly dreamer who forgot how to sleep; you’ll remember eventually, but until you do, I’ll stay with you.” _Stay_ , you like how that sounds. You consider what you’d be willing to give away for Anya just to _stay_. What world you’d sell if it meant she would come back to you as more than a haunt in the wolf’s hour.

Eyelids growing heavy with the petal touch of Anya’s lips to your brow.

You sleep.

.

.

(“You’re here?”

And always— _always_. “I am.”)


	9. we'll do this your way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “…known as the Mountain Killer.” You can’t help how your head snaps up—how your lungs constrict and your heart stumbles.

**Leavenworth City, Madison Republic, Middle United States, 99.04 AUS  —— **  **[**   _four months ago_   **]**

You’re with Peter Marowisk the afternoon his twin brother comes back from the most recent expedition to the Canyon. The youngest of the Marowisk twins is a soft touch—shy at the eye and easy to smile. The Ma’am—as the Marowisk matriarch prefers being called—likes keeping you in the public eye. Brass armor and lion helm in place. Peter tries to coax you out of it, tries to convince you to stop playing your part, but you’re not so foolish as to think she doesn’t have people watching.

One of Peter’s younger siblings was supposed to attend, but they’d been called away at the President’s behest, leaving you to guard the least likely to participate in an auction.

“This is disgusting,” he says more to himself than anything, arms folded tightly across his chest until knuckles start going white. He seems young in these moments—impulsive and full-hearted. “I can’t— _look_ at them all.” He’s not gesturing, but you can see how his eyes shift angrily to those taking their seats.

“I see them.” Calm, you reach deep down into the cold touch in your chest to find calm.

“How can you be so— _blasé_ about this?” He’s spoiling for a fight, he has been since he was informed that he was going to this auction, and then the Reckoning afterward. “These are your people, Sparrow.” You wish you could tell him how it festers in your stomach every time you see one of your people sold off like property—the press and twist in your gut as they are reduced to objects in the eyes of these _civilized_ people. You wished you could paint a clear picture of the anger simmering in your heart, or the poison in your soul, but there’s no words for it, no simple explanation for everything inside.

“I would be doing them a disservice by acting without thinking,” By thinking with your heart, and not your head—you can only think of carnivorous mountains and extending shadows. Of blue, blue eyes and cloud soft fingertips. Of all the things you had done in the name of your people.

He’s silent for the longest, “soon?”

“Soon.” You agree.

You know Peter’s associates have reached out to the Brassers—to the merchants and small town executives of cities and towns far off in the waste. Of all those paying harsh tributes to the Capital because they hadn’t the luxury to be wealthy and privileged. Places that frowned on slavery because it had never been a way of their life—who had left the Capital seasons earlier because they didn’t believe in the practice. They just wanted clean air, and land to farm, and a life—whatever kind possible in the harsh days and harsher nights.

You’d been working with Peter and his group of rebels for the better part of your time in the Capital, but you’d been looking for the knife in the back since the beginning—looking for the betrayal. For his mother—the President—to step from the dark and put you in proper chains and not just the suggestion you wear around your neck. But it never came—he schemed, and mourned, and thought, pushing through problems and trying to come to solutions. Finally— _finally_ —you’d believed in his sincerity enough to give him a message and instructions of how to deliver it.

.

.

_(“This will rouse the Twelve Clans,” you hedge, placing the carefully folded papers in his hand._

_He smiles, “they’ll help us?”_

_“If Heda makes it so.”_

_He rubs a finger against the letter like it’s a precious promise, “Sparrow—I—thank you.”)_

.

.

Resting your arms on the hilts of both blades at your hip, you wait for the precession—you’ve attended your fair share of these auctions, swaying Jacson Marowisk’s decisions weren’t nearly as hard as it was to sway his younger sister Reagan—who had taken to her career as an arena trainer with startling aplomb. Only twenty years old, she was the sharpest blade you’d seen in bleached linen and a starched collar. They’d grill you about posture, and status, and the meaning of certain marks—you didn’t know the Wasters, didn’t know their culture, but there were some universal truths, it seemed. Carefully inked marks, diligently cut symbols.

You made sure to sway them away from your people—knowing the Marowisk’s arena was the most brutal of the five Accord Houses; too many young fighters carted out of the training grounds with no pulse and a cut throat. You wanted them together—groups who could protect each other, away from you, away from the danger you were fostering.

“This is the last Expedition,” Peter says in the thrumming noise, “mother doesn’t want anything to do with the people across the Canyon.”

Smiling inwardly, you watch as everyone begins taking their seats—groups of people talking a little too loudly, displaying their wealth a little too arrogantly—your father would have had a feast with these starched-collars. He would have robbed them blind, and they would have _thanked_ him for it. “I could imagine,” you say, exhaling and ignoring the sweat dripping down your cheek and to your collarbone. “She lost a lot of men on the last one. Including—…”

You don’t finish, but you don’t have to.

“Yeah; losing Jacob really kind of—it was bad,” Peter swallows and you almost— _almost_ —feel something for the loss, but you can’t truly make yourself feel it. His older brother, Commander Jacob Marowisk, the man responsible for the sacking of the Drisankru villages, the man responsible for the deaths of so many of your people—the man who you had put a blade through as he went scurrying away as his men fought and died.

“Shame,” you drawl, feeling the press of his eyes on what little of your face he could see.

“I know he was—he was horrible, but he was still my brother.” The truest thing about Peter, is that you know he really does wish to make you understand. As if you have no experience loving monsters—as if you aren’t one yourself. “I still loved him.”

“We can’t help who we love,” you say, “we can try—but it isn’t worth the effort.” That might’ve been the hardest lesson to learn—the worst to face in the light of day. Loving someone—really _loving_ them—and knowing that that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. You loved Enrik, you loved Costia, you loved Daxon—you loved...you loved…

You _somethinged_ Clarke.

Peter might want to respond, he might intend to, but the gavel bangs and the first set of captives stagger onto the stage, chained and shuffling. You recognize Drisankru warriors, and Trikru healers—you even see the pale paint of Azgeda on the cheeks of a few. These are _your_ people. Not the Wasters you expected form the surrounding territories—you’d told Indra to stay away, you’d sent missives back to TonDC that the end of the world was a kill zone—was a ruined waste.

That it was death.

Gritting your teeth, you watch families bid high on the Azgeda warrior with too many kill scars—they’re crooked and poorly done, and you wonder how much validity they have. The group of healers gets sold together, and to an inconsequential house—one that hardly participates in arena fighting.

It isn’t until you see mossy eyes and a crooked smile that everything inside you goes cold.

Cold like a northern winter, cold like the moment before death—something bitter and numbing that crawls through your veins and chews viciously at your bones. She’s bruised and narrow, stones lighter than she’s meant to be—bones press against the bronze of her skin, making her seem brittle and breakable. But you know that to be the furthest thing from the truth. They have her chained at the wrist, the manacles tethered to a belt of metal around her waist, giving her nearly no movement. She’s grinning down at the Shinies gathered—her lip split and bleeding.

“We have a live one here, buyers,” the auctioneer says with a jovial tilt to his words—shoving at Royal’s shoulder to make her stumble forward. Her chain is tethered through the ring on the ground, making sure she didn’t get too far with her obvious desire to sink teeth into whoever got too close. “Killed a man with just a spoon and a ration wrapper…” You miss the rest of what he’s saying because there’s a bellow in your ear—loud and pained.

Turning, you see him—muddied eyes wide, his harsh face falling into the sad lines you’d forgotten about as the years passed. Of a _seken_  who never wished to fight, of a boy who wished to tell stories—of your friend who tried, and tried, and tried to be what people wished him to be. Tried until he died. Enrik’s hands are clenched tightly together, and his form goes hazy and incomplete at his edges—he’s mad, angrier than you’ve ever seen him.

And you killed him.

“How?” He asks, though you don’t think he really cares _how_ , he just wants to protect her—whisk her away from here. He turns those eyes to you and you wait for him to ask—wait for this phantom of a man to beg you to do the impossible. To choose him, when you’ve never been able to choose him before—but then his eyes dull, and he turns away.

Because he knows the answer—hours of torture and a blade through the heart taught him that, once upon a forever ago.

“I don’t know,” you say, and Peter looks at you like he always does—eyebrows pinching, lips pressing, but you ignore him—talking lower, turning your cheek to hide your lips. “Indra must have sent a war band—no one else has enough influence.” No one would dare.

The bidding had started, and you were tempted to turn to Peter—tempted to pull her into the fold, but you knew where she needed to go. Where she belonged—who she belonged with. Turning to the youngest Marowisk twin, you nudge him lightly with your elbow, waiting until pale gray-blue eyes turned to you.

“She goes to Rackhem,” you were a child-general, once upon a time, a teenage warlord—this was backroom dealing and strategic planning. This was your normal, this you could do.

“What?” He asks, a little loudly, but when someone turns to stare, you shift and they quickly turn forward once more. “Why?” With Jacson or Reagan, you would have had to be coy about it—hinting and leading and letting them come to their own conclusions. With Peter—you can just tell him—just let him know.

“There’s people there she’ll—mesh well with.” You hesitate, because you don’t think Royal _meshes_ with anyone. She’d found you in the Polis one autumn and she’d tried her hardest to carve your heart out—she’d always been quick, always been able to get the advantage, but you were quicker, you were better equipped than a girl mad with grief.

Though you’d be heavy with guilt, slow with shame—and you’d let her break your nose, let her crack a rib and break a finger. You’d blinked through the blood when she wailed and punched—blinded by tears, howling Enrik’s name.

.

_._

_(“He loved you!” Royal’s fast was brutally smashed against the round of your cheek, “He loved you!” She said it over, and over, as if that could somehow change fate. Change what you had done—what you had allowed._

_“I know,” you’d gurgled through blood, spitting the black to the dust. She tried to drive you to the ground, tried to put you on your knees—but you could only allow her so much. She could have your pain, she could have the black of your blood on her knuckles—but Heda bowed for no one._

_“Then why?!” She’d stopped—blinking eyes exactly like Enrik’s to clear them of tears. No one was here to witness her crumbling form—witness how she slumped to the dust and grabbed fistfuls of dirt. How she shook and cracked, and wished so much to join the once-boy you both loved._

_You wished there was some comfort to be found; but there wasn’t. There never was. “Jus drein jus daun.”)_

.

.

“She’s important, Peter,” you insist, though some piece of you still isn’t sure you’re doing the right thing. “She’s a leader.” You don’t even want to imagine what Octavia Blake will be like once she meets _Rouyahl kom Whetgedakru_ —gasoline and fire, if you’ve ever thought of it. Rackhem has stopped bidding—blinking with indecision, and you nudge Peter, who startles and raises his sigil slightly. Everyone startles, and when it looks like Rackhem’s buyer isn’t interested Peter clears his throat.

“Guess it’s good you got out e-early, Norman,” he’s going for aloof, but ends up just sounding a little upset—maybe confused, and you have to breath out through your nose to stop from sighing. “S’pretty expensive— _too_ expensive, I guess.”

Rackhem’s bidder—Norman—turns to glower, little rat eyes blinking rapidly against the sun, and with a cruel little smile, he raises his house sigil. “Mommy let you come out and play, Petey?” He’s a nasty little man, and you see how he’s sweating profusely, eyes jittery and unsure. He has a racking cough that leaving his napkin gray and wet, and you know he’s dying—like a scent in the air.

“She heard you’d be here today and didn’t think she needed to send anyone else,” Peter says while raising his marker, and the bid goes ever higher—they snipe at each other, driving up the price until only they’re bidding. Royal’s watching the whole thing; watching Peter stumble, watching Norman cough, but then she’s watching you. And she stops.

You feel it like a burn on your cold skin—a molten gaze as her chin tips ever so slightly. She’s not struggling anymore, not pulling at her chains or trying to spit on the bidders in the first row. Royal’s assessing you, and you wished she wouldn’t—because she _knows_ you. Knows you in ways no one else alive does—knows Little Sparrow as well as she knows Alexander, knows who existed before Heda—who _died_ because of Heda.

She’d been like your sister, once upon a time.

Royal’s watching you and you don’t even realize the bidding is over until Peter’s grinning at you—Rackhem won, at an obscene price, but it was something for them to try lording over the Marowisks. They _won_ , something—finally.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he says, brushing off his sweater with a little put-upon arrogance, and you can only shake your head. You know he’s easily your senior—a number of winters older—but you often feel like the adult when he speaks.

“You made someone _else_ spend coin, I don’t believe that’s the purpose.” You soften around Peter—around his smiles and his easy humor. It’s bad—bad for the bristling _something_ you need to keep locked away inside your chest at all times, the thing that wishes to burn this whole city to the ground—even this sweet, sweet Madisonian if it comes to it.

You watch the rest of the auctions with limited interest—you don’t recognize anymore of then faces—though one boy stands out. Wild dark hair, a face beginning to get a beard—he’s familiar, but you can’t put your finger on it. The markings on his forearms says he’s Trigedakru, which is enough for you to stop wondering who he is. The sun’s beginning to dip, getting closer to the horizon and most of the smaller families have gone home—slinking away with the presumption that nothing else of import was going to happen.

You’re leaning against a stone wall, sweating profusely under the solid metal of your armor—it’s uncomfortable, even after months of having to wear it. Heavy and cumbersome, but you’ve learned to move in it. Peter’s fidgeting in the seat he’d taken, looking down at the sigil of his house between his hands—turning it over, and over, and over.

“And last but not least, we’ve saved this one for those willing to wait,” you don’t look up, too focused on the tip of your leather boot. The beginning of a hole working its way through where your big toe was—you knew the Ma’am would replace them as soon as she noticed—wanting her attack dog to look pristine—but it’s the most _normal_ thing you wear. Worn, and fitted, and _right_ , somehow.

There’s a _thump_ and shuffle, but you’re seconds away from yawning—scanning the crowd for anyone who might mean Peter ill-will, and it startles something inside you to know it isn’t just because it’s expected of you. Peter—means something to you. He’s sweet, and kind, and reminds you of Daxon in a way—in people who believe the world needs that kindness.

“…known as the Mountain Killer _.”_ You can’t help how your head snaps up—how your lungs constrict and your heart stumbles.

She’s beautiful. It’s the first involuntary thought that trips carelessly across your mind—golden hair tangled, stardust fingers dirty and curled into tight fists. She’s looking directly ahead and it hurts to see her in chains—see where her wrists have gone red and abused. There’s a rumbling anger in your chest—banging against the inside of your gilded cage, the only thing keeping it tucked away. You hadn’t been expecting her—why hadn’t you been expecting her? She’s thin and pale, eyes washed out but still so perfectly blue.

You don’t realize there’s a tear running down your cheek until Peter’s standing directly beside you—no one’s looking, no one’s paying you any mind, but his hand rests softly on the metal of your gauntlet. Gentle like he might hurt _you_ —like you aren’t the monster between you, like you haven’t shattered whole _worlds_ before you were even an adult. “Sparrow? What’s wrong?” Soft as a raven’s wing, he asks before turning to look at Clarke—eyebrows furrowing and trying to see whatever has brought you to tears.

“That’s my,” you don’t have a word for what exactly Clarke Griffin is to you—she’s your equal, your sacrifice, your biggest regret, and your highest hope. She’s so much, and yet nothing at all. You stumble through the thoughts, pushing them each _down, down, down_ until you can’t even hear the whisper of them anymore. “She’s my star.” You say finally, and peter looks concerned for a moment—until something brightens in his eyes and he looks at Clarke in a new light.

“Oh,” slowly, softly, “Ooh!” And then a little louder.

There’s numbers being tossed around, middle tier bids that seem to sputter out somewhere without anyone really noticing—Peter’s shaking his head, and licking his lips, “Uh, excuse me?” he says, far too politely, far too civilly, “I’d like to double.” Which was _obscenely_ expensive, and a number of fellow patrons try to inform him of this—try to get him to understand how much money he just spent. “Oh—yeah, totally. I get it. Tripled, then. I need a classroom aide.”

If your heart wasn’t shattered and stone, it would swell for this man—this creature of his world that would not bend so easily to their demands, even if he did so quietly. Never boisterous with his rebellion, which was why you’d tethered yourself to him, and not the grumbling fighters trying to ban together—trying to conceal their plans to put Carpophorus in the ground in some grand statement. You knew it was coming, knew it would still take them a few months to find someone suitable for the effort—knew they’d fail.

You don’t believe you know how to die.

Clarke can’t hear the conversations—she’s too far away, small and distant—but you recognize the scheming in her eyes, the ultimatums and back up plans. So much of you wishes she wasn’t here, wishes she was eons away—safe somewhere without blistering sun or endless desert. But that small part of you—that part that might be your heart, might be your soul—is glad to lay eyes upon her again. Is overjoyed to see how solid she is against the setting sun—hardly a phantom brought here to haunt, as you’d feared for so long.

And much too soon, she’s being led away, a soldier taking her by the elbow and bringing her to the processing hall where all acquisitions need to be paid for.

“Well,” Peter says, picking up his few belongings and shoving them into his bag. “I think that about clears out my savings.”

“What?” You’re only half here—only half listening—watching for the final glimpses of gold as Clarke’s led from the open air and into a building.

“My savings,” he says, and you feel like he’s said this before. “That cleared out my savings.”

“I didn’t realize the Ma’am was hurting for wealth.” It seemed unlikely, though maybe he’d been sent here with a budget. You didn’t really spend much time trying to understand the auctions—just the extent that you could manipulate them. How far you could stretch an acquisition, how easily you could suggest a placement.

“Oh, uhm, mother’s not—I didn’t…” he stammers, and steps closer, looking around to see if anyone’s nearby, if anyone’s listening. “She didn’t buy her.” You raise an eyebrow, but halt when you realize he can’t see—has he ever seen you in the sun _without_ your helmet? Or only in the hazy dark of bunker meeting rooms—where you surely melt into the black of shadow, tucked away where you belong in the dark.

“I did,” he finishes when the silence stretches, “So—yeah—I did. Mother doesn’t—have a claim. I used my money.” And like images flickering in front of your eyes to quickly to make anything of it out—you understand. Peter had bought Clarke—not the Marowisk family, not the Ma’am or Jacson. Peter—this soft kind man who wished to spend his life quietly rebelling and living between the pages of his favorite book. You don’t understand why he’s looking at you like he’s only seeing you for the first time—only witnessing you just now, and never before.

But then he realizes something—

“This is horrible— _I’m_ horrible,” his face is blanching with horror, “I just bought _a person_. I’m a horrible human being.” He’s looking up as if his deity will strike him dead where he stands—but you can only think _doesn’t have a claim_ with absolute relief. No one is in the auction pit, no one is milling about—everyone having left to make their final purchases. So you risk it—you clasp him by the shoulder, pulling him in tight.

He’s taller than you by a significant amount, but he is soft and gives into your tight hold—you’re awkward and don’t know exactly how to embrace someone, but you try. He stiffens and then relaxes—wrapping his arms around the width of your armor, patting awkwardly at your shoulder pauldron.

“Thank you,” you say, low and too wet for your comfort—you allow yourself this moment. This single instance to remember _Lexa_. Remember all the things she might’ve been able to feel once upon a time—when Heda wasn’t so heavy, and impossible choices broke already shattered hearts. Before you sold your final pieces in a gamble with no winner.

“Oh, uhm,” more patting, though when you release him, he doesn’t move immediately. Just embraces you tighter and squeezes. “She’s special to you.” And now he’s most like his mother with his questionless-questions.

“I…,” she’s _something_ , Clarke’s been your _something_ since you had a dream about falling stars. She’s lived inside you in a way you’re unfamiliar with—not in your graveyard of a soul, not in the miasma in your heart—but somewhere lighter, somewhere where you thought _maybe_ —just maybe—you could have a place in the tomorrow you built. A place beside Clarke—a peaceful place.

But that had been before mountains and western wars—before you lived, and died, and lived again somewhere beyond the edge of the world.

“She is,” you admit, giving him this honesty, because you lied about so much—lied about who you are, and what you’re capable of. Lied about what exactly you were willing to burn to the ground to save your people. But maybe he could have this piece of you—this piece of _Lexa_ —that so rarely saw the light of day. Stepping away, fingers worrying the leather of your blade hilt as you turn to look at the processing center—you can’t see Clarke, she’s tucked away inside, but you can _feel_ her.

“Were you…?” He trails off with uncertainty, and you have to smile, because you can’t even begin to explain who Clarke Griffin was to you.

“No,” you exhale, tightening your grip on the hilt of your blade, listening to the creak of leather in your palm. Suddenly the blistering heat seems inconsequential in light of this new world you live in—a world with not only the Blake siblings, _Reivon kom Skaikru_ , and Lincoln; but also Daxon, and Royal, and Clarke. Worlds colliding together and threatening to break. “No,” you repeat softly, “our people needed us, and what we wanted—it didn’t matter.”

You can’t regret it, you can’t—but you can long for the press of her lips, and the way your name tasted on them. You can fall asleep dreaming of blue skies and golden fields, of falling starts and crumbling mountains.

“Love matters,” Peter insists.

“I said nothing about love,’ you snap, a little harshly and you almost wish to apologize for the flicker of doubt in his eyes, before he straightens and tips his chin up.

“You didn’t have you,” haughty, a poor imitation of his twin brother, “I’m an English teacher, I kind of know about these things.”

You raise a skeptical brow, “knowing _gonasleng_ does not make you a love expert.”

“But it does mean I’ve read this story a thousand times,” he sighs, slinging his bang over his shoulder and stepping around you to walk toward the processing center. “You’re the gruff hero, obviously—I’m the plucky sidekick…”

“You made yourself the sidekick?”

“Listen,” shaking his head, “I’m happy being the sidekick. Especially if it means I get to reunite lost loves.” You come to a drastic halt; dust kicking up as you refuse to move another foot—Peter continues strolling until he realizes you’re no longer following him. He turns, and frowns. “What’s wrong?”

“She can’t know I’m here,” you say quickly, two steps bringing you close enough that you need only whisper for him to hear you. “She can’t, _Peetuh_. She’ll be more valuable to your rebellion than I ever could be.” You can’t do what needs to be done if she knows who you are—if she watches Carpophorus’ cruelty with judgement and _knowing_. You can’t be this careful monster if your heart continued to stutter and claw at the inside of your chest— _Lexa_ doesn’t exist here, there’s only Carpophorus and Little Sparrow, only the brutal arena fighter and the loyal pet.

“Let’s not get carried awa—…” You cut him off as he starts.

“You heard him— _Mountain Killer_. Ask any of my people, anyone but her, and they’ll tell you exactly what that means.” You’d heard the stories, heard the retelling—how she’d gone in alone, and carved the Mountain Men up from the inside. Cracked open their doors and flooded their underground lungs with the air above. You don’t know how accurate the retelling it—much as the story of your ascension escalates depending on the clan telling the tale.

Peter Marowisk looks like his brother when he’s deciding something—it’s in the narrow of his eyes, the squint of blue-gray that glints and slicks in the molten sun above. But his face is too kind to be anything other than himself—lips half-smiling even when he doesn’t wish to, shoulders slouching instead of standing straight. You want to know how he remained good—how he stayed decent when the rest of his family rotted to their core.

“Okay, Sparrow.” He nods slowly, sucking air in between his teeth. “We’ll do this your way.”

.

.

(“ _Are you going to run and report this to my mother?” Peter Marowisk asks softly from where he’s half hidden in shadows—the rest of his group having left through the backdoor, leaving only him with the evidence of treachery._

_You’d been sent to find the softest Marowisk sibling—the Ma’am dismissing you absently from her presence with the task, and you’d follow him for half the city length—wondering why a school teacher was in the mining districts outside the Capital._

_You wonder what he’d be willing to do to keep this secret—would he kill?_

_“No,” you say finally, “but you’re about this all wrong.”_

_If anyone saw him here, they would immediately be suspicious, just as she had been—the Ma’am had eyes everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before he was found out. Before he was strung up in the square by his thumbs like traitors usually are. Peter leans back against the pillar behind him, hands shoving deep in his pockets, before grinning. Bright white teeth in the dark._

_“Okay, Sparrow,” he agreed amiably, “We’ll do this your way_.”)

.

.

You wish you had _any_ idea what you were going to do from here.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say _hey_ on tumblr! Find me @ **civilorange**. I do prompts, answer questions, and post ridiculous things. 8)


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